When You Come To The End Of The Day
by Cressida Isolde
Summary: The Courier tries to take her mind off her problems in New Vegas by taking a holiday - to the Sierra Madre. Boone and Veronica come along to keep her out of trouble. Sequel to 'If I Didn't Care'. ONE GIANT SPOILER for Dead Money. Postgame, technically.
1. When You Come To The End Of The Day

I've always been more about character interaction than quest-retelling. We'll see how it goes.

SPOILERS FOR DEAD MONEY RIGHT HERE.

* * *

Benny waved over a waiter. "What's that drink called again, baby?"

"I don't remember." The Courier pinched the bridge of her nose. "It's pink and it has sugar around the rim. Nancy's the one who makes it."

Benny raised an eyebrow at the waiter, who disappeared quietly. The Courier liked drinking in the cocktail lounge, but everything she ordered turned up with a lot less alcohol than she would have poured for herself.

"Also," she said. "Don't order one of those for me in front of Cass ever. She will piss herself laughing and I will never hear the end of it."

Benny rolled his eyes. "Fine. But seriously, are you actually going through with this? There's probably nothing there. Really. Or it's going to be three hundred super mutants with miniguns. It's a terrible idea."

"Yes I am going through with it," she said. "You know, being the voice of reason doesn't really sit that well on you, Benny."

"Yeah, well, I don't like it either. Seriously, kid, you're not some kind of two-bit treasure hunter." He blew a stream of smoke away from her.

She shrugged. "No underhanded moves to get me out of the picture while I'm away, understand?" asked the Courier, only half joking.

Benny spread his hands. "I like to think I've always been very open with you about my underhandedness." A faint smile played across his lips. "Seriously though, if you were gone I'd have to deal with the Boomers myself, and if they're still doing that whole 'artillery barrage at strangers' thing I doubt I'd make it. So take care."

* * *

Being back in leather armour was amazing. She could finally walk properly, without the skirt restricting her legs and the heels keeping her constantly off-balance. At least she didn't fall out of them anymore. The plan was to spend the night in Novac before heading off the road to investigate the signal's origin. The sun was just setting when they arrived. The Courier waved at the figure in the dinosaur mouth, but Manny didn't wave back. She shrugged, and headed into the motel grounds.

"Daisy!" she caught sight of the woman standing on the balcony, and ran up the stairs. "I haven't seen you since-" the look on Daisy's face, jaw clenched and staring, made her stop. "Um," she continued. "Since I was last... in... Novac? Good to see you again, bye!"

_Fuck_. She backed down the stairs a little too quickly, and at the bottom almost collided with Manny.

"Sorry," she said. He pushed past her without replying.

"What's going on?"

"Nothing," he muttered.

"Is... everything okay?" she asked, tentatively.

"You know what? No," he said. He stopped and turned to face her. "You don't give a shit about this place. We lost a lot of people here when the Legion attacked. Maybe we wouldn't have lost so many if we'd had two snipers."

She could see Boone, behind Manny, start to walk over, and she shook her head. She hadn't been as subtle as she thought, though, because he turned to look behind him. He turned back with narrowed eyes.

"Who'd you lose?" she asked.

"Ranger Andy. Ada, we don't have a doctor anymore. Dusty. Some others you probably won't know."

She looked away. "I'm sorry. I'll have a doctor from New Vegas sent. And the securitron patrols stepped up."

"Everything's just so easy for you, isn't it?" He gave her a vicious smile that was more like a snarl.

"Yeah," she snapped. She took a step towards him. "After getting shot in the head, killing most of the fucking Legion's leadership was a piece of fucking cake. A walk in the motherfucking-"

"And let's stop there, shall we?" Veronica said brightly. She took the Courier's arm tightly and led her out of the motel's grounds. "What was that about?"

"Holy shit, I have no fucking idea," she said. "The last time I was here, he was-"

"Not just him," said Veronica. "You were a little crazy yourself just then. He's lost people he cares about. People get upset about that."

The Courier chewed on her bottom lip. "Yeah," she said, quietly. "I'm not really- I don't know." She shrugged. "Great way to start a fucking adventure, right? Sorry."

"It's okay. You're just... so tense, lately. I kind of thought Boone coming back might help with that." She grinned impishly.

"I can _not_ believe you just said that," said the Courier, looking sidelong at her.

Veronica laughed. "Well," she said. "You took long enough to hook up. You were all –" She clasped her hands together in front of her chest and looked up at the stars – "Oh his tragic past makes him so _mysterious_."

"You fucking bitch," said the Courier, laughing. "I am going to punch you in the face and I don't even care how many of the bones in my hand I break."

"Yeah? When you gonna do that?"

The Courier grinned. "I guess that'd have to be when you're asleep?"

"But what_ever_ will people say?" Veronica held a hand to her forehead in mock-dismay. "Sneaking into my room in the middle of the night? My reputation will be ruined. _Yours_ might go up a little, though."

"I'm so fucking glad you're coming," said the Courier, suddenly serious.

"Yeah?" asked Veronica, wrinkling her nose. "I feel a little third-wheel-y."

"You totally shouldn't. It's an adventure. Not meant to be like... a couples retreat or anything. Where is he, by the way?"

"Oh, I told him that I'd take care of things and he should go inside." She shrugged. "Didn't want to make things worse than they already were."

The Courier nodded. "Okay," she said. "I'm going to go talk to... uh, Dusty's wife. Alice, I think. See how she is." She counted out a hundred caps. "You take this and go get a room from the guy in the dinosaur."

Veronica smiled gently. "Don't stay out too late."

The streets were deserted as she walked south. No more mercenaries following the doctor around. It was just like the Legion to go for the medics, too. The moon had risen, and it lit up the tiny town almost as bright as day.

She knocked on the door. There was a long silence, and then just when the Courier was about to leave, the door opened. Alice stood there, looking blankly at her.

"H-hello," said the Courier. "I, um, once helped you out with a problem with your Brahmin getting attacked."

The woman nodded but didn't reply.

"I heard about your husband," she said, slowly. "And I came to see if you were alright. If you needed anything."

"That's nice of you." Alice's voice was hoarse and creaky. It sounded like it hadn't been used in months. "But no."

"Okay. If you ever... do need anything, just ask, okay? You can write to me. Or leave a message with one of the securitrons, I think they can do that. I kind of have a lot of caps and don't really need them."

Alice nodded.

"Right. Well, goodnight."

She watched the door close slowly, and finally turned to walk back to the motel. She'd been kind of insulated from all this, what happened after the battle. What could she do about that? It didn't seem like something you could fix by throwing caps at it, unlike most things in Vegas.

Boone was waiting in her room, sitting on the sofa, when she came back. He stood up when she came in.

"Hey," he said. "Sorry about earlier. Manny likes to pick fights sometimes. Don't know why."

She sat down on the bed, facing him. "Not a big deal, I guess. Just kind of weird." She shrugged. "Does everyone secretly resent me?"

Boone didn't answer.

"...Not-so-secretly resent me?" She grinned humourlessly. "I asked you a while back if you'd get a hard time about working with me. What about... now? Things being what they are."

His gaze was clear and steady. "Not really."

"I guess being in First Recon might keep you out of that a bit, seeing as they know me. How about the other soldiers, anyone tried to start shit with you?"

"Don't do this," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because it doesn't _matter_. You can't let it get to you. I don't."

Her shoulders slumped. "Yeah." She looked away. "Yeah, okay. You're right."

"So. Early start tomorrow," Boone said. He didn't stand up.

"Yeah?" she said, still feeling belligerent. "So what are you going to do about that?"

He shrugged and stood to leave. He was almost at the door when the Courier spoke.

"Fuck you," she said half-heartedly. "Come back."

He did.

* * *

The Mojave was already sweltering by the time they left Novac, just before dawn. The air was just gathering a red haze as they picked their way across the country, through Nelson. The beeping of the Courier's pip-boy led them to a metal grate, which Boone lifted off with some difficulty.

Veronica was first down the ladder.

"Guys – this is... Odd. I think this is- this used to be a Brotherhood safehouse."

The Courier followed her. "Who wrote all this? Shit, is that guy dead?" There was a headless corpse sprawled by the stairs down, which she hadn't seen while her eyes were still adjusting to the darkness.

"I would assume so," said Veronica. "Though he doesn't look like he's been dead long. Less than a week, I think."

Boone's boots were loud as they hit the metal floor. He swung the rifle off his back. "I don't like this."

"Me neither," said Veronica. "I'm not sure what this has been used for. Who's... who's been using it."

"Okay," the Courier said. "Quick look around and then we leave, right? The signal's coming from just up ahead." She could hear the woman's voice, not just through her pip-boy but coming from further inside the bunker. "I don't think there's anyone in here," she added, walking down the steps.

She could see the radio, set up on a table with a stage light overhead.

"Watch your feet," said Boone. "Could be traps."

"Yeah," she said absently. "Hey Ronnie, can you do some sort of signal tracking thing to see where this is being broadcast from?"

"I don't think it's a signal," said Veronica, slowly, as they walked towards the table. "I think it's a recording. And it's coming from here. Not being broadcast to here. Coming from here."

"It's- what?" The Courier crouched in front of the radio, vaguely aware of a faint hissing. "That can't be right."

She heard a thud behind her. What had been behind her again? The room looked misty. She tried to stand up, but couldn't, and lost her balance. As she lay on the floor, she craned her neck to see Boone and Veronica lying on the floor. Oh. That wasn't good. That wasn't good at all.


	2. And The Night Calls Your Worries Away

Thank you all for reading (and an extra special thanks to those that reviewed!) If I ever become a proper grownup writer it will be because of all of you.

This is a great song, by the way, you should youtube it. I'm surprised it hasn't made it into a game yet, it's totally got that 'abandoned, dimly-lit dance hall at the end of the world' thing going on. Or is it just me that gets that?

My secret shame: I never found the vending machine code for stimpaks. This made this DLC INSANELY HARD and I had to turn the difficulty all the way down :( When I was doing a bit of story-reconnaissance I found it. Jesus Christ, how did I miss that?

* * *

The Courier's mouth was pressed against damp, clammy cobblestones. She opened her eyes weakly. Her head was throbbing. Red. Everything was red. The sky. The air. The gently swirling mist tasted like metal. What was making it move? There wasn't any wind.

She was in what looked like a town square. The buildings were all too close together, clustered together like overlapping teeth, looming over the narrow cobbled streets.

She pushed herself into a sitting position with shaky arms, not entirely sure she was even awake. There was a fountain in the middle of the square, with something glowing in it. A woman. A glowing blue woman. Right.

One whole side of her body ached as if it had been hit hard with something heavy. And she didn't have her armour on. Wait. She didn't have _anything_. She frantically grabbed at the pockets of the thin canvas jumpsuit she was somehow wearing. She had nothing.

"_Fuck_," she said, out loud. There was an answering groan from behind her. She turned to see Boone, struggling to stand up, and Veronica, kneeling.

"Holy shit," she said, scrambling over to them. "I am so fucking glad to see you guys." She broke into a coughing fit as the red mist filled her mouth, coating her tongue with a metallic film.

"Are you okay?" said Veronica.

"Yeah, yeah," she replied. "Just... for a minute I thought I'd be all alone here."

"What's that around your neck?" asked Boone. She noticed him going through the same movements as her, checking pockets, legs, back, for weapons or supplies. His eyes narrowed.

The Courier lifted her hands to her throat. "I don't know. Metal and wires and stuff. You've got them too."

Veronica got to her feet, and leaned in to take a closer look at her collar. "Hmm. I have a really bad feeling that this is set to explode. I don't know under what circumstances though."

A tinny crackle from the fountain made her spin to face it, her hands reaching for a gun that wasn't there.

"I may be able to assist in that regard."

A flickering projection of a bearded man's face replaced the glowing woman in the fountain.

"It will explode if you attempt to leave, and," he sighed deeply, "unfortunately, in the presence of certain radiowaves. Do as I say, and you will not be harmed."

"E-Elijah?" Veronica stepped forwards, eyes glowing with excitement. "Where have you been? What are you doing here? It's so good to see you again, I was so worried!"

"Veronica," he said. His voice changed, softening. "I'm... sorry you had to be brought here like this. It's been so long – I wasn't sure how you would remember me, left with McNamara and the rest."

"No, it's fine!" she said. "I completely understand." She turned to face the Courier and Boone, who were standing tensely watching. "Guys, this is Father Elijah! I've told you so much about-" she turned back to Elijah, giddy and almost incoherent with excitement. "She helped- we found the pulse gun! From your notes!"

The image in the fountain must have been from a photograph, because it wasn't moving. "I'm so proud of you, Veronica. But now I need your help. There is technology in this place, Veronica, that is unparalleled in today's world. Unimaginable. You _must_ help me, it is imperative that we secure this technology before anyone else can."

Veronica grinned. "Okay!" she exclaimed. "Of course I'll help you. What do you need us to do?"

Boone, next to the Courier, shifted uncomfortably. "This isn't right," he said under his breath, barely a whisper.

"Mm-hmm," agreed the Courier. "What do we do?"

"Go along with it. For now."

She nodded her assent.

"First," began Elijah. "In the fountain there is a Holo-rifle. Take it. The inhabitants of this place are... aggressive."

Veronica scooped it out.

"There are three of you, so to enter the Sierra Madre Casino you won't _need_ to obtain extra help – although further assistance may prove useful. I will upload your instruction and the coordinates of three-" the faintest of pauses –"people who may prove useful to that girl's wrist device. You should also be able to tune her radio to their frequencies to enable you to listen in on them." He paused. "Veronica – thank you. This means a lot to me."

The projection faded. Veronica turned back to them, brimming with barely-suppressed excitement.

"Isn't this amazing?" she asked. "I can't believe he's here!"

"Yep," said the Courier. "That's really something." It had been a while since she'd been referred to as just "that girl". The associate of someone else. No one special. She smiled.

Boone leaned in and lifted her collar gently in his hands, turning it around so he could see it from all angles.

"Watch your fingers," she said, grinning, trying to feign a confidence she didn't feel.

"What are you looking for?" asked Veronica.

"Speaker," he replied.

"What for?"

He didn't reply, but tapped the collar just under her chin. The Courier touched it, felt the tiny grill, and nodded.

"Right," she said. "So, Elijah's uploaded three targets. The first one is... Dog? A real dog?"

"Can't imagine a dog here," said Boone. "Who gets the gun?"

Veronica handed it to him. "I don't really need it," she said. He raised an eyebrow at the Courier, who shrugged.

"You're a better shot than I am," she said. "I'll just, uh, tag along at the back." She laughed dryly. "Scream if anything gets too close, you know. Collect these fucking chips or something."

Their footsteps echoed strangely as they moved through the streets, and the mist seemed to whisper mutedly around the doorways and arches. More than once, Boone held up his hand for them to stop, listening, but after long, tense minutes, nothing made any more sound.

They moved slowly through the narrow streets. The buildings around them were crumbling, roof tiles piled under the overhanging roofs where they had slipped off long ago. Most of the doors had been boarded up, and most of the ones that hadn't were blocked by something on the other side. More rubble, probably. The buildings seemed to loom over the streets, and the Courier was afraid their footsteps would judder them out of place, burying the three in a pile of crumbled masonry.

They walked through a gate, closing the door behind them. In the distance they could hear a faint clanging, like a warning bell. They moved slower, more cautiously, watching for any sign of life.

Up ahead, through an archway, something was moving. It was poking at the piles of rubble, weaving in a sort of undulating movement that looked inhuman.

"The fuck is that?" the Courier said, under her breath. The figure froze. The Courier's eyes widened? How could it have heard that? It couldn't have.

The figure turned, first its head and then the rest of its body, to look at them. It was wearing some sort of mask, and its eyes glowed in the dim light like lamps. It leaped towards them, bounding like an animal. Boone took aim and fired, stopping it in mid-jump. It fell to the ground.

"Fucking shit," said the Courier, badly unnerved. "What the fuck is that?" She crouched over it and tugged at its mask. It wouldn't come off. It seemed to be attached to its clothes, like a radiation suit. She reached for its right hand, which had what looked like a bear trap on it, and started undoing the clasps that held it to its wrist.

The left hand of the creature grabbed her wrist. She screamed, yanked back hard, and stamped on its face as hard as she could. It didn't feel like bone and cartilage that cracked under her feet, after the initial crunch it was a lot more soft, almost liquid. She stamped on it again, and her feet sank into its head like a bag filled with water.

"Jesus _fuck_," she said, scrambling away until her back was up against a pillar. Veronica was crouched over, staring at it. She finished removing the bear trap glove and strapped it to her own wrist. She poked experimentally at its head a couple of times, then stood with a shrug.

"Let's keep moving," she said.

They found the bell, still ringing insistently, outside the police station.

"It says Dog's in here," said the Courier.

Their collars started beeping almost as soon as they were inside, and they had to press themselves against the door to make them stop. Boone took aim at the radio on the other side of the room and hit it, sending bits of metal and plastic flying. Dog was a nightkin, and Veronica crouched by his cage trying to get him to speak to her without much success, while the Courier searched the back rooms for weapons. She found a pistol and some body armour in the locker rooms, the latter of which she reluctantly gave to Veronica, who'd probably need it more.

The pistol, at least, allowed her to shoot out the speakers herself. Boone followed her as she walked down the steps to the basement. She jumped as a voice came from seemingly nowhere.

"Come and find me," it said. It seemed to be challenging them rather than inviting them, and the Courier readied her pistol. She wasn't as happy with pistols as rifles, but she was still a decent shot. Close up, at least.

"You doing okay?" asked Boone.

She smiled. "It's not really what I was expecting," she said.

"Yeah," he said. "Me neither." He looked away, down the dark corridor. "Sorry."

"Denied," she said. "It's still an adventure. Better than... I don't know. Arguing with sharecroppers about irrigation systems."

Boone wrapped his fingers around his collar, covering the speaker. She did the same.

"What are we going to do about Elijah?" he said, his voice low.

"Holy shit, I don't know," she replied. "We _are_ actually prisoners, right? Veronica's got me confused."

"I assume that if we weren't, we wouldn't have to wear these."

"Maybe bomb collars are how the Brotherhood express affection," she said. "Were you at Hidden Valley with me that one time?"

He didn't smile. "I think that the others might know more about him. Once we've got them we might be able to figure out a way out."

"Or a way _in_, right? He wants to get into the casino, we help him, then maybe we can get out while he's doing whatever."

He shrugged. "Could go that way."

"What do we do with Veronica? Just go along with Elijah actually being an okay guy?"

"I don't know. Yeah. For now."

"Fuck," she said, and followed the voice recording down the hall.

Boone had been right. The voice led to a radio, which she turned off gratefully, and a holotape next to it.

* * *

The Courier stood outside the nightkin's prison cell.

"Hey buddy," she said. "I got something for you." She hit the 'play' button on her pip-boy.

The effect on the nightkin was amazing. He stopped mumbling to himself and got to his feet, shook his shoulders back, and walked towards the cell door with an air of barely-suppressed menace. The Courier took a step back involuntarily. The nightkin laughed.

"You must know I have the key, surely."

"Are you... Dog?" she asked, confused.

"No. I am God. Dog is in the cage. You're not who I was expecting. Where is the old man?"

"Um. I can take you to him? Well, sort of."

"No. _No_." The nightkin grasped the bars of the cell. "The old man was meant to come here."

"What did he do to you?" asked Veronica, cautiously.

"He made Dog his pet," spat the nightkin. "A wretched, snivelling, cowering _pet_ to do his bidding."

"Well," said the Courier, cheerfully. "Why don't you come out and we can all go see him?"

The nightkin turned his back. "I'm not going anywhere with you. You're a slave as much as Dog is."

"Fuck's sake," she said. "What turns you back into Dog?"

"It's voice-activated as well, isn't it?" said Veronica. She took a step closer to the cage. "Elijah's voice?"

It was God's turn to take a step back. "No. You wouldn't-"

"Don't worry," said the Courier. "I'll let you right back out." She hit the play button on her pip-boy.

The nightkin cowered, hunching his shoulders. "M-master?"

"Hey, big guy," cooed the Courier. "You've got a key on you somewhere. Find it and give it to me."

Dog handed it to her hesitantly, and she unlocked the cell door.

"Great," she said. "Now come on out here."

She felt Boone coming to stand close behind her, wary.

"And let's talk to that other guy again." She played God's voice from her pip-boy.

God looked at the cage, then her, and roared. She took a step back, tripped over Boone's foot, and fell to the ground. Boone didn't have a chance to raise the rifle before the nightkin backhanded him violently, knocking him across the room. The Courier scrambled back, frantically mashing at the buttons on her pip-boy, and finally managed to play Elijah's tape.

Dog looked down at her, confused.

"Fuck," she said. "That was _fucking_ retarded." She waited for her heart to stop pounding.

"You okay?" she called out to Boone.

There was no reply. She took her eyes off the mutant, trying to see into the darkness. "Boone?"

Veronica was crouched over him in the corner, next to the bench he had hit. "He's – he's bleeding," she said quietly. "Quite badly."

The Courier swallowed thickly. She stood, stomach full of dread, and walked over. One of Boone's jumpsuit legs was soaked with blood already. Boone was conscious, but only just, breathing raggedly.

"I've got no stimpaks. No med-x. Anything," she said. She reached out a hand to touch Boone's leg, as gently as she could. The fabric was damp with blood, and she ran her hand up his leg, trying to find the source of the bleeding. Just above his knee she felt something hard and sharp, out of place. It was bone. Boone went white when she touched it, and let his head drop back against the wall.

"Sorry," she whispered. "Shit. Okay, there's some sort of clinic to the north. Should we try and reset the bone?"

Boone shook his head. "Bleeding... too much," he said with some effort. "Sharp. It'll cut... more."

She nodded, and lifted his arm over her head to help him up. Standing was too much for him, though, and he collapsed, unconscious. The Courier fell to one knee, unable to hold him up on her own.

"Ronnie," she said desperately, fighting back tears. "I can't – I'm not strong enough, can you?"

Veronica took her place, and was able to take most of his weight.

The Courier picked up the holo-rifle, and opened the door. The red mist swirled in, and, jaw clenched and with her heart in her throat, led them outside.

* * *

Oh man this was so hard to write. I hate covering in-game stuff.

Dialogue is my one true love.


	3. Do You Ever Watch The Setting Sun

Every so often I feel like I should take a break from writing, but I get so bored without it :(

* * *

Was it night? The Courier couldn't tell. The sky was still the same dull brick red, but she could barely see anything. The buildings were shrouded in shadow, and she stumbled through the dark in a state of near-panic, constantly checking her pip-boy to make sure they were still going the right way through the maze of streets. Every so often she caught a glimpse of the strange inhabitants of the Villa, a glowing eye as it disappeared behind a pillar, or a shadow as it leaped from one roof to the next.

At first she tracked them with the holo-rifle, but she wasn't quick enough to hit them, and she had little enough ammo to start with. But it made her jumpy as fuck. Every sound, every creak of a building, every stone skittering across the cobblestones, made the breath catch in her throat. They were watching them. From the rooftops and the gutter gratings and the decorative ironwork and the half-buried doorways.

She paused at an area that looked familiar, and turned back to look at the others.

"Was this where-" she began hesitantly, "where that thing I stomped on was?" It was gone. Had it been collected, or had it just woken up again? She shivered and kept walking.

The medical district was a morass of crumbled archways and blocked passages, narrow streets winding and changing direction at odd angles.

She wanted to move as fast as possible, but Veronica was having trouble keeping Boone awake and moving.

"Stay with me, buddy," Veronica said. "Almost there."

She froze as their collars started beeping, a chorus of electronic warnings. The Courier went on ahead, looking for the speaker, turning in circles as the beeps from her collar came faster and faster. Finally she spotted it through the gloom and managed to squeeze off two shots.

"It's clear," she called out. Her voice sounded strange in her ears. There was a panicked edge to it.

Veronica came around the corner. It was clear that she was carrying most of the weight. The Courier turned away. She couldn't look anymore, the trail of blood behind them made her want to be sick.

The neon sign was like a beacon in the darkness, a glowing first aid cross. She threw the door open.

The inside of the clinic was lit by a rack of spotlights over the reception desk. A stimpak on the reception desk caught her eye. Her hands shook as she picked it up, almost not believing it was real. There was a holotape on the desk next to it, and she picked that up too. A code for stimpaks from the vending machines.

She locked eyes with Veronica, hesitated, then plunged the needle into Boone's leg. It seemed to bring him around a little. He lifted his head, and the smile he gave her almost made her cry.

"Wait here," Veronica said. "I'll have a look around. Keep him awake." She lowered Boone onto a threadbare chair.

The Courier sat down in the chair next to him. Blood was pooling by his ankle. Slower now, but still too fast. She put her hand on top of his.

"Listen," he said. "Don't think... I'm gonna make it."

The Courier clenched her free hand into a fist until the nails bit into her palms.

"The way you're saying that makes it seem like you've got a choice," she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. He laughed, quietly, like he always did, and the Courier felt tears start to well up in her eyes.

"I wrote... wrote a letter. For you. It-" he touched his pocket, then let his hand drop. "Yeah. Of course not." He closed his eyes for a moment.

"Stop it," she said. "You're going to be fine, and we'll walk out together, and we'll find the way out and go home."

"When you get back to the Mo-" he began, but the Courier couldn't take any more.

"Don't," she said, her voice catching. "You can't – please don't leave me, Boone, I can't do it without you, I need you." She couldn't stop the tears from falling, and wiped them off with one hand.

He smiled at her weakly. "You going to keep calling me that?"

"Calling you what?"

"Last name."

"Oh," she laughed shakily. "You said I couldn't use your first name."

"Jesus." He leaned his head back against the wall. "Of all the things I've ever told you to do... you pick this one to latch onto."

"_Auto-docs_!" Veronica appeared in the doorway. "Auto-docs! They've got limited functionality but they can fix your leg."

The Courier helped Boone stand up, but there Veronica took over. She followed as Boone was manoeuvred into the auto-doc and watched as the door closed behind him.

"He'll be done in a couple of hours," said Veronica, cheerfully. "Just like a turkey in the oven."

The Courier tried to smile, but the result must have looked pretty horrifying because Veronica hugged her.

"Hey," she said. "It's okay. He'll be fine."

"This is such a mess," sniffled the Courier, nose pressed into Veronica's shoulder. "I've never felt so fucking useless in my life."

"Well, hey," said Veronica. "That's what I'm here for. Big strong girl to protect you."

The Courier laughed, despite herself.

She wrinkled her nose. "You smell... burnt," she said. "Why do you smell burnt?

"Oh!" said Veronica. "Yeah. There's the weirdest goddamn thing upstairs."

* * *

Veronica and the Courier peered around the corner. It was another translucent glowing blue person, except this one was walking.

"Can it hear things?" asked the Courier.

"I don't think so. I think it's all by sight. Anyway, when it sees you, it goes yellow, and if you don't leave fast enough, it turns red and starts shooting."

"And you can't hit it?"

"No! Goes straight through. But it didn't follow me down the stairs, so I don't think it can leave its area. So it probably has a central, um, emission point."

They split up to search the rooms, sneaking down the corridor behind the hologram. There wasn't much. A handful of stimpaks. Medical notes on the old computers. And a code for getting med-x out of the vending machines.

"You fucking piece of shit," she whispered.

"Hey," a loud whisper came from the doorway. "I found something."

The courier stared at the code for a second, then stored it in her pip-boy.

Veronica was crouched under a glowing blue bulb, trying to detach it from the wall with a screwdriver.

At the far end of the hall, the hologram turned and began to walk back.

"Ronnie," whispered the Courier, as a warning.

"Almost," Veronica replied, as the bracket holding the emitter came loose. A tangle of wires connected it to the wall. "Damn it."

The hologram was getting closer. Veronica was working fast, trying to disconnect each wire individually. The hologram stopped as it sensed them, flickering pale yellow. The Courier tensed, ready to run, but Veronica grasped the bundle of wires in one hand and yanked them out of the wall. The hologram vanished.

"Might take this apart, later," she said, thoughtfully. She slid the emitter into her pocket. "I can see why Elijah was so excited about this place."

The Courier pressed her fingertips to her eye sockets. "I hate this fucking place," she said. "Want to go get the next collar while we're waiting? It's in this building."

"Why not?" said Veronica. "It's gotta be easier than the first one, right?"

* * *

"Okay," said the Courier. "In here." She held the holo-rifle in front of her. "You ready?"

"Yeah," Veronica said, her hands in loose fists. "Do it."

She opened the door, and stepped back when its inhabitant dropped from the auto-doc's robotic arms and fell to her knees in front of them. The Courier's first thought was that it was a young boy, short and bald and covered in scars, but when they looked up the Courier saw it was a woman.

"Chris- _Christine_?" Veronica dropped to one knee next to her, holding her up. 'What are you doing- How- What happened to you?" She held the other girl's face in her hands, touching her lips and the scars that ran from them almost to her ears on either side.

Christine opened her mouth, but the only sound that came out was an awful whistling gasp, and she grasped at her throat. She looked from Veronica to the Courier dazedly, in disbelief, and then raised a hand to touch Veronica's lips as Veronica's hands were touching hers. Her mouth outlined the syllables in Veronica's name.

Veronica was close to tears. "Who did this to you?"

Christine shook her head, shrugged, and made an elaborate series of gestures that the Courier couldn't quite follow.

"He... _what_? No," said Veronica. "I can't..." she trailed off as Christine made another series of gestures. "Well, I don't _know_," she continued. "We were knocked out by gas or something, and when we woke up Elijah started talking to us, and said we needed..."

Christine rolled her eyes and shook her head. She put a hand on Veronica's arm and looked into her eyes.

"Okay," said Veronica quietly, looking down. "I believe you. But the technology here is amazing, we can't just let it go."

Christine narrowed her eyes and shrugged, then looked inquiringly up at the Courier and back to Veronica.

"She's... a friend. She helped the Brotherhood with some things. She kind of runs New Vegas."

"Hi," said the Courier. "Uh, nice to meet you. I'm going to go check on Boone. Let you guys catch up, I guess."

She backed out of the room.

The monitor attached to Boone's auto-doc seemed to indicate that he was stable, at least. She couldn't really understand most of the graphs and measurements on the screen, but nothing was flashing red and his heartbeat was slow, but constant.

She sat on the floor, leaning against the auto-doc. She gently rubbed the metal with her thumb, and laid out the five stimpaks she'd found in front of her, ready for when the auto-doc was finished.

"You'll be okay," she whispered. He had to be.


	4. And Dream Of Things

Something was shaking her shoulder. Just gently. She tried to lift her head, but her neck cramped painfully. She made a sleepy grumble of protest. But there was something important she'd been meaning to do. Wasn't there? She opened her eyes to see Veronica crouching in front of her. She was smiling, but her eyes were red.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty," she said, with a tight smile that looked forced. "Boone's almost done, so I thought I'd wake you up."

"Everything okay?" she mumbled sleepily.

"Yeah, yeah. He's doing well. All signs point to yes."

"No, I meant with you. I mean, good, but I kind of assumed you wouldn't be as calm if there was a problem."

Veronica laughed and sat down. "Ah, hell," she said, her eyes bright and desperate. "I can't even understand what's going on right now."

"Was that the ex-girlfriend you told me about?" asked the Courier.

"Christine? Uh, yeah. What are the odds, right?" She looked away. "I didn't think I'd see her again," she said, quietly. "I thought I might run into Elijah some time in the future, but... not really like this." She wrapped her arms around her knees.

"Where is she now?" asked the Courier.

"Sleeping." Veronica studied a piece of plaster by her foot. "She said..." Veronica was silent for so long that the Courier didn't think she was going to continue. "She said that Elijah cut her head open and put things in her brain. Did experiments. I don't know what to think," she said, her voice shaky.

The Courier shuffled over to sit beside her and squeezed her hand. "This place is all kinds of fucked up," she said.

Veronica gave her a weak smile. "Yeah. Last time I go on vacation with _you_."

"At least you're not a third wheel anymore." The Courier raised an eyebrow and grinned hopefully.

"Oh God," said Veronica, laughing. "This is the worst couples retreat ever."

The Courier covered the speaker on her collar, and motioned Veronica to do the same.

"What do you think we should do about Elijah?" the Courier asked tentatively.

Veronica's smile faded. "I don't know. I think we have to stop him. Maybe. I don't know what he wants. Maybe I should talk to him about that."

The Courier shrugged. "Have you seen the bodies in the other room?"

"Same outfits as us, no heads?" Veronica said, unhappily. "Yeah. I guess... maybe he's been doing it for a while. Once he gets hold of an idea, he doesn't let go of it easily. Doesn't matter to him what it costs."

"I think," said the Courier, "that honestly, our best chance of getting out is doing what he wants. And not making too much of a fuss about it. At least until we open up the casino."

Veronica shrugged, and let her hand fall from her collar. They watched the glowing blue lights run around the base of the auto-doc.

The machine started beeping, and the Courier jumped, grasping for the stimpaks on the floor where she'd dropped them earlier. Boone was pale and shaky, but managed to step out on his own, rather than fall out, which is what the Courier had been secretly expecting.

She grabbed his arm and jabbed him with a stimpak.

"Uh, thanks," he said, confused.

"I'm going to go check on Christine," Veronica said, and left.

"Who's Christine?" he asked.

"Her long-long ex-girlfriend."

"Are you serious?"

"Mm-hmm," she said, shoving the needle of another stimpak into his skin. She chewed at her lip. "You gave up," she said quietly.

"What?"

"You gave up," she said, louder. "You just – you were going to die, and you just kind of said "well, okay." I thought you were over this deathwish bullshit."

He sighed. "It's not like that. Look, being in the army... you learn to accept that it might happen to you. You're prepared."

"I'm not really okay with that," she said. "I don't want to get a letter one day that says you've been killed. Or _from_ you." She readied another stimpak. "You don't even need to work." Her voice sounded sulky in her own ears and she looked down.

Boone took the stimpak from her gently. "I want to," he said. He injected himself with a practiced hand.

"You could be my head of security," she said. "Or, or, I'm trying to get a police department set up, you could..." She trailed off. She knew he wouldn't take it.

He pulled her close and wrapped strong arms around her. She looked up into his eyes.

"I don't want to lose you," she said. She could feel his heartbeat in his chest "You scared me."

"I'm sorry," he said. It was all he could say.

* * *

Dog wasn't in the police station any more, but the Courier wasn't really surprised. Poor thing had been hungry, he'd probably gone out looking for something – someone? – to eat. They followed a trail of dismembered body parts, and eventually found him inside a crumbling building, gnawing on what looked like a leg bone.

"Hey, big guy," she said. "How you doing?"

He looked up, guiltily. "Hungry," he said. He hid the bone behind him.

"I don't quite know what to do with you," she said, mostly to herself. "Why don't you come along with me? I'll take you to see your Master."

He followed like – well, a puppy, really, but she couldn't quite get the other personality out of her head. It was so angry. Probably angrier, now that she'd shut it away twice. But keeping it locked up as little more than a spectator in its own body seemed like a punishment that it couldn't possibly deserve.

She left him by the fountain, along with Veronica and Christine, and set off with Boone to find the last collar.

* * *

"God _fucking_ damn it!"

Boone crouched to ease the teeth of the bear trap she'd stepped in off her leg. She clenched her teeth as the rusted metal scraped through her flesh. She lifted her leg out gingerly and leaned against the wall to balance while she applied a stimpak.

"Why are there so many goddamn bear traps everywhere?" she asked. "Honestly, if the amount of bear traps I've stepped in is anything to go by, the whole fucking country must have been crawling with motherfucking bears before the bombs fell."

Boone shrugged. "Do you want me to go first?"

"If you think you can do better," she said, her voice tight. He didn't reply, but stepped in front of her.

* * *

They moved slower, but Boone and his near-infinite patience pointed out every trap, gently setting the bear traps off with a book or a pencil or whatever was close to hand, and making sure they both stepped carefully over tripwires. He noticed things that the Courier just hadn't seen – the bouquet of grenades hanging over the door, the glowing orange light from a frag mine shining gently through a sheet of paper, seemingly carelessly discarded on the floor.

"How many times have you saved my life now?" she asked as a sort-of apology.

He turned back to look at her and gave her one of his rare, heart-melting grins. "I'm not keeping score," he said.

They walked out of a desiccated building to see a row of twinkling white lights decorating a room in front of them. There was a figure on a chair, looking out over the square. It waved.

"Lovely evening, isn't it?" he called out. "Care to join me?"

They climbed up the stairs inside. He was facing away from her, but the Courier recognised the lack of hair, the pattern of veins on the back of the man's head.

"You don't sound like a ghoul," she said.

He heaved a theatrical sigh. "I assure you, my dear – I'm not faking it." He gestured towards the seat next to him. "Please, sit down." As she got closer, she saw that he was wearing a faded and worn black tuxedo and dark sunglasses.

She sat down in the chair he indicated. Boone came to stand behind her.

"My name is Dean Domino," he said. "You may have heard of me. If you would do me the favour of not making any sudden movements or not standing up without my permission, then I am happy to say that I will not have to use this detonator –" he held it up "- to blow up your chair." He smiled.

Boone bristled, but didn't move.

The Courier rolled her eyes. "Fine," she said. "What do you want?"

"Just an assurance that my interests will be looked after," he said. "I want to get _out_ of this collar and _in_ to the Sierra Madre. So from now on, you will be working for me."

"I'm already working for some other shit head who wants to get into the casino." She narrowed her eyes. "And he's linked all our collars together, so if one goes off, they all go off. And he can hear everything we say. So, I don't think that's going to work out. Sorry."

An expression she couldn't quite figure out passed across his face, and he laughed. "Well." He put down the detonator. "It appears you're not the one I have to bargain with. Never mind." He stood. "If you've come to collect me for a purpose, I shall follow you."

The Courier watched him carefully. There was something strange about his demeanour – each movement was carefully planned, even throwaway gestures. She stood up gingerly.

"We're going back to the fountain," she said. "That's where I'll get my next instructions."

He made a short bow that somehow managed to be slightly insolent.

"Then lead on," he said.

* * *

Ooookay. Burning out a little now.


	5. That You Might Have Done

The Courier watched Veronica warily as she spoke to Elijah. She wasn't doing a great job at pretending not to be disturbed or angry about everything she'd seen; Christine, the bodies, the traps laid for the unwary. She barely mumbled responses, staring at her feet, shoulders hunched.

The Courier wasn't sure if Elijah could actually see them, but he didn't seem to notice anything was wrong. His enthusiasm was boundless. "We are so close, Veronica! The Sierra Madre is almost within our grasp." Kind of halfway between a mad scientist and a kid after getting their first bb gun.

Christine grimaced. The hate in her eyes was palpable, but she stood mute, frustrated. Dog cowered, and Dean seemed to be doing an impressive job of giving the impression that he wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention to the strange gathering.

"Okay," Veronica said, wearily. "We have to set off some sort of signal so that the casino will open." She forced a smile. "There's going to be fireworks. It'll be just like the fourth of July up here."

"Fourth of what?" asked the Courier.

Veronica shrugged pensively. "Doesn't matter. How do you want to do this?"

The Courier blinked. "You're not doing that great, are you?" she asked.

Veronica smiled wryly. "Not super."

"Ronnie," she began. "Is this the reason that you don't really let anyone get too close to you?"

"I – what? When did this turn into the psychoanalysis hour?"

"It's just... You're always alone," said the Courier. "You... keep yourself apart from people."

"Well." Veronica blinked. "Uh, the Brotherhood isn't too kind to those who go against it. You saw what happened after I showed McNamara the pulse gun we found." She gave a one-shouldered shrug. "They can't tolerate anything which divides someone's loyalty. Which is understandable. Just... not that progressive." She sighed. "I don't really... fit in there. Maybe I should have left when I had the chance. I don't know. The only people that I did really feel like I connected with... well, they left. And now they're here. So, yeah, kind of... confusing."

The red cloud swirled around them.

"You've always got a home with me." The Courier put her free hand on Veronica's arm. "But are the Brotherhood okay with that?"

"I think so. McNamara likes you, anyway, and that's probably enough to protect you. Well, that and the giant army of securitrons." She grinned. "Anyway, I think they like having me out of the bunker most of the time, to be honest." She shrugged awkwardly. "But we need to keep moving."

"Okay," said the Courier. "Well, I think we can split up for this one, though I'm not sure it's really a good idea. So, you take Christine. I'll take Dog, and I guess Boone gets Dean. Lucky."

She copied two rough maps from her pip-boy to a scrap of paper, ripped it in half, and handed one half to Veronica and the other to Boone.

"Watch your back," she said to Boone, her voice low. "And once you're done with him, meet me at the fountain. I think I'm gonna need your help."

* * *

She was so tired. How long had they been there? Her pip-boy had the date, but she couldn't remember when they'd arrived. Three days? Two days. Couldn't be three, could it? Two or three days, and maybe an hour and a half's snatched sleep against the auto-doc. Two or three days living off Fancy Lad cakes and dry crunchy goddamn freeze-dried apples, that sucked the moisture from her mouth and replaced it with the strange metallic burn of the cloud.

And no water. A mouthful here and there of rust-coloured water that set her Geiger counter off alarmingly. She'd found a bottle of wine in a house that she'd stepped into to avoid watching Dog tear into his victims, and was just about at the point where drinking the whole goddamn thing was sounding like a good idea.

She followed Dog through the streets, happy enough to tell him which way to go when necessary but let the destructive, devouring force chew through the few who chose to attack them.

"What's the deal with the other guy?" she asked, using a fork to try to dig the cork out of the neck of the wine bottle.

"Other... voice?" Dog asked.

"Yeah, yeah. Seems angry."

"Voice tries to stop Dog," he said sorrowfully. "Puts Dog in cage. Wants to control Dog."

"Where did he come from?" The fork tore through the cork, ripping the top off and leaving half stuck in the neck. The Courier glared at it for a moment before pushing the cork into the bottle with the handle of the fork. Not the most classy, but then again, her present company probably wasn't that discriminating.

"Don't know," he said. "Started talking not long before now. Says Dog should stop eating Ghost People, stop being greedy. Says Dog can't eat all of them, too many, too many sharp sticks. Dangerous."

"Well that's not _bad_ advice," she said. "Is Ghost People what they're called?" she asked.

"Dog _can too _eat all the Ghost People."

"Hey, I believe you, big guy." She ducked through a crumbled wall to rifle through the drawers of a bedroom. A jar of Buffout and six pairs of sunglasses. She shrugged and pocketed the lot.

She was so tired. What would be really helpful was Jet. The dull crack as the seal was pierced, the sudden frosty coldness of the canister as the pressurised gas escaped, and then...

But this place was pre-war, and Jet was invented post-war, so her chances of finding any here were minimal. Buffout would probably do, anyway. She took two and washed them down with wine, dropped the empty bottle. She stepped back through the wall to see Dog waiting for her.

"Dog had wrist-collar once," Dog said, quietly.

"Oh. Yeah. Do you remember what vault you were in?"

"Not much. Master took us away."

"What?" she asked. "Elijah did?"

"No. Different Master. Old Master is gone." He sounded so sad about it that the Courier felt a stab of pity.

"Are you happy here?" she asked.

Dog made a wordless sound of disagreement. "This place is bad. Want to go back. Back to the base. But it's gone."

"Oh," she said, feeling slightly helpless. "I'm real sorry about that."

There was one of the patches of thick red cloud just ahead. She found it was best to run through them, even with the possibility of traps. The mist got into eyes and nose and ears and skin, so even holding your breath wouldn't help. It felt like drowning. But the Buffout was kicking in, she felt stronger, faster. She leapt into the cloud, terror forgotten and ignoring the burn in her lungs and her eyes, until coming out the other side.

Her pip-boy indicated that this was the place. A row of brightly-lit switches behind a wrought-iron gate.

Dog hesitated. "Dog not want to be caged. Not again."

The Courier chewed on her lip. "Yeah. I can understand that. The Master says you're the only one who can do it though." She looked at the diagram on the wall, instructions that showed which switch did what.

"No. Please?" he whimpered.

"Do you think the Voice could do it?" she asked tentatively.

"M-maybe."

She sighed. "Alright. I'm going to lock you in here _just for a bit_. While I talk to the Voice. Because I'm scared it will hurt me. Then I'll unlock it. Promise."

"No."

"Hmm." She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and back again. "Take this." She held out her pistol. "Now, if I keep you locked in there, I won't have a gun, and then I won't be able to fight the Ghost People. Okay? So I won't be able to just leave you locked in there."

Dog looked fretful. "Okay."

She locked the door at the terminal control, and played back God's voice.

The nightkin looked up, wary and full of anger, intelligence smouldering in his eyes.

"Hi," she said.

He walked from one side of the cage to the other, tested the bars, and retreated.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"To get this gala thing started."

God dropped the gun she'd given to Dog, and kicked it under the gate towards her. She picked it up reproachfully.

"I made a promise," she said.

"To assuage Dog's pathetic fears. Why?" growled the nightkin.

She leaned against a pillar. "I feel a little sorry for him. He just wants... something. Approval. Love. A whole lot of food." She grinned. "He's a good guy."

"You've never seen him rip the arms off a human begging for his life."

Her smile faded. "That's... true. I'm sorry I put you back in the cage. I didn't really think about it. And it's not right to mess around with people's heads. Shouldn't have done it. Sorry."

"So what do you expect me to do?" he spat. "Why trap me in here?"

"I was serious about not wanting to get hurt," she said. "You hurt my... friend quite badly. I'll open it up if you won't hurt me."

"Must have hurt your friend more by luck than anything," God muttered. "This body is... strange."

She unlocked the door and swung it open gingerly.

"So," said God. "This place. Again."

"I want to get out of here," the Courier admitted. "I think you do too. Getting into the casino might be our only opportunity."

"Fine," he growled. "If I'm going to stay here, Dog will need feeding."

"What, seriously?" she asked. "He's eaten like half of every Ghost Person we've run into."

"If you bring me two more, I will be able to stay here without his... interference."

She grimaced. "Right."

It was the first time she'd been really alone since she'd arrived. Hell, it was the first time she'd really been alone since... Novac. Shit. She remembered crawling around Primm in the dark, shooting convicts with a shitty varmint rifle. But she couldn't think about that now. The Ghost People were bolder now that she was alone, dancing in her peripheral vision, but gone when she turned her head.

She was hit from behind and fell hard, fasce first into the cobblestones. They were strong. God they were strong. She struggled, managed to land a lucky elbow, and unloaded six shots into its head. Was it dead? She pulled out a knife she'd found and sawed at its head, strange-coloured blood pouring out of the suit. That'd stop the bastard getting back up.

The second one attacked while she was looking for something heavy enough to get through the spinal column. She hadn't reloaded her pistol yet, and slashed at her attacker with the knife wildly. She tore through the mask with the blade, and the bottom half of it slid partially off, dripping with thick, oozing blood. The face underneath was human, but only vaguely, withered lips pulled back over cracked teeth.

She finished sawing through the first one's neck and moved to the second quickly, before it woke up. She dragged the corpses back to God and left for the fountain, moving quickly.

* * *

Boone was sitting on the stone lip of the fountain, head resting in his hands. He looked up when he heard her approach.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah. Tired." He frowned and looked at her more closely. "Did you take something?"

"How the _fuck _do you do that?" She raised an eyebrow incredulously.

He shrugged wearily. "You stand different."

The Courier blinked. "Well, yeah. Found some Buffout. It's wearing off now, though. Kinda getting the shakes."

"Got any left?"

"Yeah." She grinned and handed over the bottle.

He took a couple and swallowed them dry. "I feel like shit," he said. "Let's keep moving. Hologram's giving me a headache."

* * *

OKAY. Going on holiday now.


	6. Do You Turn From Your Work With a Smile

Been on holiday! Sorry about the wait.

* * *

"Did Dean behave?" asked the Courier.

"He took a little convincing. He wanted me to do it. Just touch some wires together. Almost said yes just to get him to shut up." Boone was walking in front of her, just a little too fast for her to keep up.

"Fucking sick of people threatening me to get what they want," she growled. "Just for fuck's sake, if someone would just for once actually ask nicely, and then not fucking double-cross me after I've done it I would be the happiest fucking girl alive."

Her head was aching with a dull, pulsing throb that made her grit her teeth.

"If our fucking collars weren't linked I'd have fucking kicked his face in like that ghost thing from before."

"Calm down," Boone said, irritably. "You've had too much buffout."

"Fine." She glared. "I'll just get a med-x then." She brushed past him and made for a vending machine, gently glowing in the dusky light.

He gripped her by the shoulder and shoved her against a pillar. Her head hit the stone with a sickening crack, and her vision flashed white for a second.

"You are _not_ starting with this bullshit again," he said. "Did I hurt you?" he asked, after a pause.

She shook her head, as much to clear it as anything. "Don't know your own strength?" she asked, with a half smile that showed her teeth. He dropped his hand from her shoulder and stepped back.

"Sorry," he said. "I didn't- I'm sorry."

She shrugged, and looked back at the pillar. The plaster was actually cracked, although that was probably down to shoddy workmanship than anything else – the few working computers she'd been able to find had all sorts of odd references to the town being little more than a cardboard city, never able to hold the hundreds that it promised without collapsing. Never meant to stand for this long.

"Come on," she said. "We have to get to our place."

The red mist swirled around them as they looked at each other. Boone took a last look at the dent that her head had made in the pillar and then fell into step behind her, silent and wary.

* * *

A tangle of rooms, climbing through houses and roofs and over shaky parapets led to the tower. As they got higher up, the cloud thinned, although the sun wasn't strong enough to penetrate through to the ground.

She climbed the stairs of another decaying building. She was almost used to the noise that they made when she moved through them by now, creaks and groans and shrieking metal. Was that really a bell tolling? She wasn't even sure that the noise wasn't all in her own head.

She rounded the corner, and stopped dead. There was a skeleton on a table the middle of the floor. A black candle was placed on each corner of the table. She wasn't sure if it had been here since the bombs fell, or if some sick fuckers had had some sort of ceremony more recently. Tortured a fellow treasure-seeker to death. Maybe the skeleton was found somewhere else and someone had put it there to fuck with people who found it later.

Her mouth was as dry as the desert and tasted like blood. That was the funny thing about the desert, actually, in the Mojave wasteland she'd somehow never been as thirsty as she was right now. Sure, it wasn't the easiest place to survive, but between rusting sinks in skeletal houses, bottles in old ruins and the hundreds of travelling merchants that flocked to New Vegas, she'd never had much trouble finding something to drink. But here it was scotch, vodka, or wine. There was a bottle of wine on the table in fact, not even opened. But as much as she drank back at home, between meetings, lunches with stakeholders – god, she hated that word – and evenings in the cocktail lounge, she'd never really lacked for water.

She opened the wine on the table and drank from the bottle. It was old and thick and dry and tasted like dust, and as much as she wanted to spit it out, she forced herself to swallow it. She half-expected Boone to make a comment, but he'd been silent now for almost two hours. It was more like he'd acted when they'd first started travelling together, and that put her on edge too.

The wine, despite its taste, made her less jumpy, and marginally lessened the painful throbbing in her head. It was hard as shit to concentrate, though, and she had to dig her nails into her skin in clenched fists to keep her focused.

She crawled out onto the balcony. There were two ghost people in the courtyard below. They stood their ground, bolder than most of the others had been. Maybe they could sense weakness. Maybe every goddamn one of them was going to rush them at once.

They made a strange chittering noise as they moved, but it didn't seem like they were talking to each other. Or that they even knew that each other was actually there. She crouched slowly, behind the balcony railing, and aimed her pistol at one of them. They scattered instantly, vanishing in seconds. She could barely even tell which direction they'd gone. There was a scratching noise from the house below her. Shit. Coming after them.

"Come on," she said. "Quickly." She led them around the rickety balcony, and through a room full of bunk beds. Maybe ones that the building contractors had slept in. At the other end of the room was a small courtyard, and she stepped out determinedly. The control tower was close now, and the ghost people were on their heels.

She only just had time to throw a protective arm up in front of her face to shield herself as the spear came slashing towards her face. It cut deep, lodging in the bone of her arm. The pain cut through the blur caused by no sleep and wine and the buffout and when the ghost person wrenched the blade out of her arm she almost threw up.

With her other hand she fumbled for her pistol, aiming a kick at its legs to buy herself time. Her pistol finally free, she brought it up and shot it twice. It barely slowed it down. It hefted its spear for another slash, and then, in front of her eyes, disappeared into glowing blue ash. The spear clattered to the ground, loud in the sudden silence. Boone stepped from the doorway, re-shouldering the holo-rifle. He handed her a stimpak, wordless.

She tried to swallow, her throat dry. "Thanks," she croaked. He walked past her. She followed him up the ladder to the top of the tower.

From the top of the tower, the town beneath was barely visible, blanketed in swirling red mist. The Sierra Madre casino rose high above it, and the light from here was a pale pink, the outline of the sun visible through the haze.

She leaned forward and pressed the intercom button.

"Is everything ready?" she asked. There was a chorus of assent from the grill. "Then let's go." She threw the switch, and jumped as lights exploded in the sky.

The streets below filled with music, and underneath that a chilling screech. Ghost people started to swarm onto the streets, hundreds, maybe thousands, pouring out of cracks in the ground and holes in the walls and dropping from the rooftops.

"Holy fuck," she breathed. She turned to look at Boone, and then back at the ground, crawling with ghost people, so many it looked like an anthill.

"We have to run," she said.

They ran, headlong through the streets, ignoring the slashes and swipes and stumbling frantically down steps, through mist and radio signals setting off their collars.

Glowing lights lit the street from the fountain to the casino, and they kept running, ghost people grasping at their clothes and weapons and legs and toes. The casino door, thankfully, opened under her hand, and she slammed it behind them.

She leaned against it, catching her breath. There was a familiar sound she could hear. A bad sound. Something worrying, a faint hissing noise that made her uneasy. As she dropped to her knees, she finally remembered where she'd heard it. The abandoned bunker. She heard a thud next to her, and then nothing at all.

* * *

One of these days I should probably switch to an M rating.


	7. Do You Feel

Lololol, splitting up title lyrics because I'm way behind already. Also, I just found out that Dead Money releases for PC and PS3 on Feb 22! Not long now.

* * *

The Courier opened her eyes. The light inside the casino was dim, but she seemed to be in exactly the same place, which was disorienting for a moment. She sat up, stiffly, and checked her wrist. She'd been out for almost four hours, but it still felt like she hadn't slept in a week.

"Finally." A crackly voice came from her pip-boy. "I've been waiting for you for hours." He sounded petulant. "You are the only one I am able to contact."

She felt a pang of fear, and looked around. Alone. Again.

"Where is everyone?" she asked. Her voice was scared and uncertain in her ears.

"The casino has... security measures. It's still in lockdown, so the security will gas anyone who comes in, and move them to where she thinks they ought to be."

"Well why didn't I get moved?" The Courier stood up shakily, and finally began to take in her surroundings. The casino was as grand inside as it was outside. A sweeping staircase led up to the second floor, with wrought iron railings and decorative tiles.

"It's highly sophisticated. It might recognise a voice, height, weight. Clothing, possibly. Other things. Maybe you aren't anyone it recognises, so you've been classified as a guest."

There was a fountain in the corner of the foyer that had never held water. As she got closer to it, her collar started beeping. She backed off hurriedly.

"Okay," she said slowly. "What do I do?"

"Find _Veronica_," he said. He sounded frustrated. "She at least will be competent enough to navigate her way through the casino security."

The Courier spotted a radio and made a run for it, turning it off just as her collar was beginning to beep faster. "You're kind of a dick, you know that?"

He laughed contemptuously. "I've been called worse."

The foyer seemed relatively safe. Maybe. There was another radio that she had to force herself to get close enough to turn it off, but otherwise safe, and more comfortingly, empty. Nothing to jump out at her or drop off the roof or leap at her from a dark corner. She relaxed a little, wandered under an archway marked 'Restaurant' and tried the door. It was locked.

"So where's Veronica?"

"I suppose I could walk you through waking up the Sierra Madre if you can't locate her," said Elijah disdainfully. The Courier tested the door to the casino floor. The handle turned under her hand and she went in.

There was a glowing hologram staring straight at her, and she half-drew her pistol before she remembered it wouldn't be any good. But while it turned to watch her as she moved, it didn't change colour.

"You'll need to get the electricity going. If Veronica isn't here, she may be in a part of the hotel that isn't open yet." He sighed. "I hope you're capable of doing this alone. I am far too close to be stopped now."

"Mm-hmm." The Courier tapped at a computer that seemed to control the hologram security. The hologram turned and began walking away. She followed it, and crept up the stairs. At the top there was a bar, overlooking the empty gaming floor. The darkness in the casino covered everything like a thick syrup.

She walked behind the bar and along the dark hallway. Her pip-boy light barely penetrated the darkness. She couldn't hear anything. Even outside there had been the eerie whisper of the mist, and their own echoing footsteps, even, but in the carpeted hall there was nothing. The holograms didn't make noise when they moved, but at least their flickering glow could be seen from around the corner.

She walked back out to the main floor. She'd attempted to mess around with the hologram's programming by using the network of computers in rooms branching off the hallway, but she couldn't quite figure out how to make one in particular disappear. It was standing guard in front of a door. It had to be important, right?

She took a step towards the hologram, and then another. She was fairly certain that they couldn't open doors. Although they might be able to walk through them. Like ghosts. Could they do that? It was flashing yellow at her. She felt her heart started to beat faster.

She was almost close enough to touch it, close enough to see the glowing blank lamps of its eyes, the carefully neutral expression it was wearing, the detailed collars and cuffs of its clothing. She wondered who it was modelled after, which long-dead man they'd borrowed their faces from.

It turned red just as she edged around it. It didn't even stop to raise a simulated weapon, just started emitting laser blasts. She was so close it couldn't miss, and she barely turned away in time to avoid getting shot in the face. The smell of singed hair filled the air and she broke into a run, wrenched open the door and slammed it closed behind her.

Her back and shoulder stung, and she craned her neck over her shoulder. There were scorch marks in the goddamn thin white jumpsuit she was still wearing, holes seared through canvas and flesh. She hissed in pain as she pulled the material away from her skin.

"Ugh. Elijah's voice was tinny. "You need to find Veronica. I'm not even sure how you've survived this long out here."

She smacked the pip-boy against the wall. "Just _fuck off_," she snapped. "I'll find her." She frowned. "Wait," she said. "Can you see me?"

"No," he replied. "I can see where in the hotel you are, though. And, of course, I have access to the data on your device."

"That's private," she growled. "Leave me alone."

When she heard the click as he turned his speaker off, she almost regretted it. Having someone to talk to while she stumbled around in the dark was an odd sort of comfort. Even if they were a crazy asshole.

She flexed her shoulders experimentally, and winced. She'd heard somewhere that it was better to wait for burns to finish developing before using a stimpak, so the medicine wouldn't have to fight against flesh that was still being damaged. Now, granted, she'd probably heard that from some drunk at the Thorn, but it sort of made sense. What you were meant to do was find something cold and chill the burn for ten minutes or so, which would reduce how severe it would eventually be.

There was a fridge upstairs behind the bar. But she couldn't risk another run past the hologram that was probably still waiting outside. For the first time she looked at the room she was in. Well, closet, really. The hologram's emitter wasn't there. She could maybe use that toolbox to reflect the hologram's lasers – would that even work? She ran her hand through her hair, wincing when she got to the sudden patch of burnt ends.

She turned, her pip-boy light revealing a metal box on the wall. She opened it. Full of switches. She ran her fingertips over them hesitantly, and then pulled the biggest one. Light flooded the room.

She squinted for a moment and opened the door gingerly.

There were still holograms on the floor, but the friendly ones. Moneychangers and roulette dealers. She let out a breath she hadn't realised she was holding.

"Well done," said Elijah. "But be careful – turning the power back on seems to have woken up some signal interference."

"For fuck's sake," she said. "Can't you just turn the collars off? Even just mine? I won't even tell the others."

"No." She heard tapping in the background behind Elijah's voice. "In fact, it seems that at present, the collars are the problem. You need to find the others, and kill them."

"What?" she said. "No!"

"Fine," he snapped. "You don't need to kill them. But you do need to get them off the floors they're on, they're interfering with the sound archives."

"You know," said the Courier. "Veronica's told me a lot about you. But she never mentioned that you were a gigantic fucking shithead."

The connection closed abruptly, and the Courier's first reaction was to brace herself for her collar to start beeping. When it didn't, she uneasily made for the bar once more, to the refrigerator, to find something to cool her shoulder.

The refrigerator opened with a rush of dead, warm air. Of course it wasn't cold, she'd only just turned the power back on. She splashed her back awkwardly with water from the sink next to it, soaking the jumpsuit and making it cling to her uncomfortably. Cold drips trickled down her back. After she'd cooled it to the point of it almost not hurting anymore, she turned around and bent down to the faucet, taking deep gulps of water. It was the first she'd had for a long time, and when she'd finished she almost felt ill. Finally, she jabbed a stimpak into the flesh of her shoulder, and followed her map to the kitchen, where her pip-boy told her Dog was waiting.

* * *

She pushed open the door gingerly. The room smelled like gas. There was a valve next to her, and she turned the wheel until it was no longer streaming out.

Dog was arguing with himself, his voice alternately moaning and growling, cajoling and threatening. She couldn't even tell which was which. She crouched, watching him, and when he moved, made a beeline for the next valve, near the meatlockers, scrambling on hands and feet to not be seen.

"Don't want Voice," Dog said. "Want to be alone. Can't be alone. We both die."

She skirted around the edge of the room to the last valve, and tightened it with shaking hands.

"You don't have to do this," pleaded God. "We can leave. Just leave. No more Master."

"Going to make casino burn," said Dog, dully. She took a deep breath and stood up from behind a bench.

"We can still do that," she said, her voice falsely cheerful. "But why don't we wait until we're out of it first?"

He blinked at her as if she were just another hologram. "You left Dog in cage," he said, confused.

"Yes," she said slowly, ignoring the pounding of her heart. "But I told you what was going to happen. And I said you'd be safe, and you are. You've been a good boy, Dog."

Dog made a whining noise in the back of his throat.

"Don't call him that," spat God.

"Sorry. But you have been good, big guy, and Master says you can go now. Wherever you want."

"Go?" Dog moaned. "Without Master? Dog needs Master."

She studied him, rough blue skin and threaded with scars and the bear trap clamped shut on his arm, and bit her lip.

"I don't think you do," she said tentatively. "I think you, and the Voice, can work together."

"No!" roared Dog, taking a step towards her. She took a step back inadvertently, bumping her heels on the wall behind her.

"Listen to me," she said, as if she were telling a misbehaving child what to do. "I have a plan. I want you to listen to it."

The nightkin – both of them – eyed her carefully.

"Now, I really don't know shit about messing around with anyone's head. I can't fix you. But I think I can help. Come back with me to the Mojave wasteland. I know a doctor – two doctors, actually, who can help you. One is working on a cure for the nightkin schizophrenia-"

God snorted. "Humans think they understand what's wrong, do they?"

The Courier ignored it. "The other doctor specialises in mental trauma. I think they will be able to help you resolve this... split. Do you understand?"

Dog nodded, his eyes wide.

"There's a supermutant community close by. There are others like you. Nightkin. It's safe for you. You don't have to stay there forever."

Dog nodded again, this time in agreement.

God narrowed his eyes. "What do you want out of this?"

"Um," she said. "For you to not kill me, mostly. And for Dog – sorry, the big guy – to be happy. He's a good guy."

There was a long pause.

"All right," said God. "We'll go to this place. Do you want us to come with you now?"

"Oh holy fuck, yes," she said.

* * *

I secretly kind of feel like I'm cheating when I take non-game options *gameshark*


	8. That It's All

The theatre was dark, a single dim backstage lamp the only light in the large room.

She told Dog to keep to the shadows, and made her way through the tables to the front of the room. There was a music stand just in front of the stage. She leafed through the pages idly. A key dropped out of it, and she bent to pick it up.

"Your friend's a quiet one. Cold eyes." Dean was watching her from the metal walkway over the stage. He leaned his elbows casually on the railing. "Is he always like that?"

She felt the hair on the back of her neck rise.

"Pretty much," she replied.

"So he's the muscle, you're the... er, brains as it were?"

"Not really," she said, carefully. "Brains and muscle is kind of just Veronica on her own."

"I must admit, I don't really understand your group dynamic," he said lazily. "The quiet one seems awfully protective of you."

She grinned. "Maybe I just need a lot of protecting."

"But what are you _for_?" he asked. "What do you _do_? You can't be for entertainment, surely."

"Mostly administrative purposes, these day," she admitted. "It's a cut-throat business."

"Which more or less brings me to my next point." He inclined his head politely. "I really am going to have to ask you to leave."

The Courier sighed. "Awkward," she said. "Guess what I was just going to ask you to do?"

"You still think you can compete with me? You're a child. I've been here for two hundred years, you've been here barely a week."

"Why even bother competing?" she asked, shifting from one foot to the other. "Just come with me. We'll all find the treasure."

He snorted. "Become part of your entourage? That's hardly befitting a man of my stature." She shrugged a shoulder. "No, I think we shall have to end our brief acquaintance here." He stood up straight. "I'll have security show you out."

Three holograms flickered into life on the audience floor among the tables. She retreated hastily to the back of the room, and jumped when she bumped into Dog in the darkness.

"Hey," she whispered. "I'm going to go backstage. You stay out of sight, try and take those speakers down in you can. If you can't, just keep out of range."

She crept around the edges of the room, through the backstage door. The backstage area was small, just a couple of small dressing rooms and a larger costume and props storage area. The first dressing room was Dean's. She rifled through his things. There was a key on the table, and it fit the safe on the wall. The safe held a pistol, which she left, a handful of casino chips, which she took, and a holotape. She used her pip-boy to play it back.

_It's no use getting cold feet this late in the game, sister. You knew what you were getting yourself into. Try backing out now, and I'll ruin you. So make sure you just stick to the plan. Be smart, play dumb, and look pretty as a picture._

She pocketed it and kept moving. Around the next corner was the door to the backstage walkway. She tried the door. Locked.

The door opposite led to a dressing room that must have been Vera's. The woman in the fountain, preserved for centuries as a glowing blue symbol of the old world.

Vera's dressing room was larger than Dean's, which must have been galling. Her mirror was surrounded by light bulbs, still mostly glowing. There was a photo of Dean, before he was a ghoul, lying on the dressing table, the glass cracked diagonally from corner to corner.

She picked up another key, and tested the door opposite. It opened.

"Well," sighed Dean. "You're persistent, at least."

"Yeah," she said. "Maybe that's why the others keep me around. What were you blackmailing Vera with?"

"Aren't you a nosy one?" he said mildly. "Well. What _wasn't _I blackmailing Vera with? Mostly chem use. Med-x, usually. A lot of med-x." He leaned against the wall. "You've got a touch of that too, now I think about it. Around the eyes. A sort of... hunger. As if you'll never feel satisfied again. Am I right?"

She forced a grin, but Dean wasn't buying it.

"I think I saw some down the hall," he drawled. "A couple of syringes by the tiny skeleton with the teddy bear."

"Thanks." She rolled her eyes. "But what did you want Vera to do? I'm not getting your plan."

"Well. If you insist." He stood up a little straighter, and looked out through the curtains at the empty floor. "I used Vera to get to Sinclair. He seemed awfully taken with her. But then she tried to back out, and so I had to find a way of keeping her loyal."

"Who the shit is Sinclair?" snapped the Courier impatiently.

Dean sighed theatrically. "You haven't been paying much attention, have you? Sinclair built _everything_ you see here. All for _Vera_. Even the vault only opens for Vera's voice."

The Courier frowned. "But Vera's dead. How are you meant to get into the vault now?"

Dean grinned. "Auto-docs are fantastic things, aren't they? You can even program them to replicate someone's vocal cords." He waved a hand. "But she was just backup. There should be enough of Vera in the hotel music archives to unlock the door."

The Courier felt her lips draw back in fear and disgust. "You did that to her?"

"Oh, don't look at me like that," he said airily. "Desperate times, and so on."

The Courier struggled to regain her voice. "I – I really don't understand what you want. It's been hundreds of years. You're the only one left who still cares."

"When I set out to do something," he said. "I make sure it gets done. This was meant to be the biggest heist in history."

The Courier let the hand holding her pistol drop to her side. "So it's all about the treasure?"

"No!" exclaimed Dean. "No, no, no. This was about-" he paused thoughtfully. "About destroying a dream."

"Sinclair's dream?" she asked.

"Well done," he said, with the barest hint of condescension. "Sinclair was... a bit of a Pollyanna. Always looking on the bright side. Thought the best of everyone. To bring him down using the woman he loved would have been almost poetic." He looked out over the stage. "It is a pity I'm not able to see his reaction, but I suppose the contents of the vault will be reward enough."

"You did this because Sinclair was too nice? What the shit?"

"Oh, he wasn't _nice_. This place is a monument to his ego." He laughed quietly. "Built to last, indeed. I suppose he did a good job."

"Seriously?" The Courier narrowed her eyes. "Because that's kind of a lot of effort to go through for someone you just don't like." She tilted her head questioningly. "See, it'd make more sense, for example, if you'd propositioned him and he turned you down. You're just too emotionally invol-"

The gunshot was loud in the enclosed backstage corridor. The Courier was knocked back a step. She looked down at her chest, the bloom of red slowly spreading against the white canvas. Her legs gave out, and she fell backwards against the wall behind her and slid down against it to the pistol fell from her hand.

"Disgusting child," said Dean disdainfully. He picked her pistol up and walked past her, back down the hall the way she'd come. He returned and placed two syringes of med-x neatly on the floor next to her. Just within reaching distance.

The Courier could only watch him. Each breath hurt, a whistle of cold air tearing at her lungs each time she struggled to breathe.

"Why don't I just leave these here?" He smiled at her. "This is rather convenient, actually. It gives me time to get off the floor before your collar goes off."

She coughed, misting the legs of her jumpsuit with droplets of blood. She raised her hand, trying to cover the wound, but couldn't lift it high enough. There was no room for terror, just pain. Her throat worked as she tried to speak.

"What's that?" Dean bent down, lowering his ear to the Courier's lips.

"D-dog," she managed, little more than a whisper.

"Dog?" he exclaimed. "You're dying, and 'dog' is the best insult you can come up with? How disappointing. I really had expected better. From our brief conversations I've been able to ascertain that you are quite inventive. Even if your vocabulary is somewhat limited. What they teach children these days I really don't know."

He stood and straightened his lapels. "Well," he said. "It's been... an experience knowing you. Thank you for your assistance, and I really do wish you the best in your future en-"

His words were cut off as Dog grasped him from behind, lifting him by the head. He barely had time to struggle before his skull cracked like an egg under Dog's fingers.

"Hurt?" asked Dog.

She nodded her head once in response. She could barely hold her head up.

"We need to get off the floor before our collars go off." That sounded more like God. He paused. "Would you like to take one of these syringes?"

She looked down at them, blinking. She nodded again, stiffly. He picked one up and slid the needle into her arm inexpertly. The Courier felt it overtake her like a sweet velvetwave, sweeping her into darkness.


	9. Worth The While

Short! Mini-scene, really.

* * *

The Courier opened her eyes. They felt as if they were full of sand. She tried to wet her lips with a dry tongue. She was in a bed. A real bed, not just a dirty mattress on an old metal bed frame. This must be the guest rooms of the hotel. The sheets were soft, and the pillow under her head was plump and fluffy. She reached for a glass bottle of water that had been left on the nightstand, and rolled to one side so she could drink without spilling it.

Boone was sitting in a chair by the window, looking out over the villa. A cigarette in his hand was slowly turning to ash.

"I didn't know you smoked." Her voice came out as little more than a croak.

"Tastes better than the air here," he muttered, but he crushed it out against the windowsill and turned to look at her. "What did you do to the mutant?" he asked. "Seems even crazier than before."

"I said I'd find him some help," she yawned. "Where is he?"

"Well, I told the smart one to search for those hologram emitters and destroy them, and the dumb one to look for small blue glowing things and smash them. That was a few hours ago." He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

"Are you – ow. Are you okay?" She sat up, wincing at the pain in her chest.

He took a long time to answer. "Yeah," he said finally. "How are you feeling?"

"Okay. Hurts a little." She risked a peek under the covers. She hadn't been bandaged up – but then, there wasn't must point if you'd popped a fucking lung, what could a bandage do? She was wearing a large man's shirt, with the buttons done up wonky, the button at the bottom trailing below its buttonhole. She couldn't stop herself from smiling. Her jumpsuit, scorched and ripped and covered in blood, was lying in a damp pile by the dresser. Wouldn't be putting that on again.

"Yeah," said Boone. He was looking out the window again. "Think we might need to find you another auto-doc. Fixed you up with a couple stimpaks, but I don't know what's going on with your lung. Might not be inflating properly. I don't know."

She pushed the covers down and stood up. She staggered slightly, but kept her balance. She wiggled her bare toes in the carpet. Oh god, the carpet was amazing. Thick and plush and the softest thing she'd ever felt. Twice as good as the carpet at the 38. Better than a lot of beds she'd slept in, to be honest.

She could see Boone watching her, a strange look on his face. Getting excited about the carpet _was_ actually pretty weird, wasn't it? Why would she – oh, right. She stopped dead. The med-x. She could still feel it, just, a warm peaceful blur swimming around her head.

"Is there a bath in there?" she nodded towards the door.

"Yeah."

"I'm going to have a bath. It's been like what, a week?"

Boone shrugged. "Go ahead."

It took a while before the water came out clear, and then even longer for it to heat up, but the sensation of slipping into a warm bath after days of running, fighting, and crawling through dusty buildings was amazing. She watched the water turn a pale coppery red, from the cloud as it soaked out of her skin.

She was scrubbing the contents of a tiny shampoo bottle into her hair when Boone came in. He sat down against the wall.

"When the mutant brought you in I thought you were dead," he said, flatly.

She couldn't meet his gaze. "I'm sorry."

He looked away. "I don't think I can do this anymore," he said.

She felt uneasy, the beginnings of dread twisting in her stomach. "Do what?" she forced out.

"This. Exploring. Adventuring. Whatever."

She relaxed a little, sinking a little lower into the bathwater.

"I keep-" he began hesitantly. "I keep worrying about you. When we're fighting something. Where you're standing, what's… going to hurt you It's… distracting."

"I can take care of myself," she said, a little indignantly.

He looked down at the bathroom tile beneath his feet. "Yeah. Usually. I know. Fighting in close quarters isn't really your strong suit, though. And this place is nothing but close quarters." He ran his hand over his face. "And when we got separated before, and I didn't know where you were, or what had happened to you, or how to find you. And then the mutant shows up with you covered in blood, and I just thought…" he let the sentence trail off.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I don't want to make you unhappy. But you used to be okay with it. Watching my back and everything."

He laughed bitterly. "Yeah. It was a lot easier back then. Before I cared about… anything. Hell, half the reason I joined you was that I thought you were going to get yourself killed. Figured that might be as good an end as any."

She ducked under the water to wash the shampoo out of her hair, and came up dripping.

"Well, what about when I'm in Vegas, and you're out… soldiering? Do you worry then?"

"I didn't use to," he admitted. "But you don't seem as safe as I'd thought, now that you've told me about getting shot at." He looked up at her. "I don't know what I'd do if something happened to you."

"So what would you be happy with?" she was a hard edge to her voice that she hadn't quite meant to put there. "Three kids and a white picket fence? Farm full of bighorners? You can't protect me from everything."

His smile looked forced. "I guess not."

"Craig," she said, for the first time. The shape felt strange in her mouth. She looked at him through eyelashes damp from the bathwater. "I love you."

He got up and left the room without a word.

The Courier stared at the door long after he left. She laughed once, shakily. It came out sounding more like a sob.


	10. As You Dream

A dress. For fuck's sake. A pretty pink dress that was entirely inappropriate for running around and shooting things was the only goddamn thing that the Courier could find to wear in the hotel room. And she'd be fucked if she was going to run around the hotel in a fucking towel while she searched for something else.

She wasn't going to wear the heels she found in the wardrobe with them, though. Especially not with this carpet. She smiled, bitterly.

And she had no gun. Dean had taken it. And from the few brief flickers of memory of being carried by Dog, there were ghost people patrolling – if that's what you could call it – the floor downstairs. Unarmed, on her own, in a dress, was not the way she'd particularly like to take them on just to get her pistol back.

The med-x had worn off, now. Mostly. She had that familiar feeling of emptiness, a sense of urgency and needing something badly, but not the aches and chills and wanting to be sick that she'd gone through… the last time. Best not to think about that.

She left the hotel room, Looking for Dog. Not Boone. Definitely not Boone. _Shit_. God_fucking_dammit. She grabbed at a corner of peeling wallpaper as she walked past and ripped it off as hard as she could. She left the trailing end of it hanging limply.

She found Dog in a kitchen area, rooting through the contents of the fridge. He turned slightly guiltily when he heard her, face smeared with food and condiments.

"Hey," she said. "How you holding up?"

"Dog do good?" he said, hesitantly.

"What? Oh. Yes. You did real good. Thank you. Good boy."

"Voice tired, go away."

She frowned. Getting them back home without damaging either personality might be a little harder than just letting them both have free reign. Dog had been in the body for longer, so he was probably stronger. The Voice – God? – was smarter, though. Easier to reason with. And less likely to suddenly switch to Elijah's side at the last minute. She chewed her lip thoughtfully, watching him.

Dog turned around and looked behind him, trying to figure out what she was looking at.

" Do you have enough food?" she asked carefully. "I've got a ton of chips for the vending machines."

"Hungry," he said. "Yes, please. Hungry."

"If I get you some food first," she said. "Can I talk to the Voice for a bit? I need him for…" she shrugged a shoulder. "Maybe a few hours."

He made an unhappy noise, but nodded. The Courier felt a sudden pang of guilt at manipulating him like this. He was just hungry. She handed him the entirety of her stash of chips.

"Come back when you're done," she said.

* * *

She walked quietly down the hall, God in tow.

She slowed down when she heard voices coming from a room ahead. One was Veronica, and the other must be Christine.

"That's not how it _happened_!" She'd never heard Veronica angry before. Irritated, yes, exasperated, yes, but nothing like this. The unrestrained fury and the catch in her voice as the words tore out of her throat were almost painful to listen to.

"Veronica-" Christine's voice was soft and hurt.

"_No._ You don't _get _to change things now. You stood in the doorway," Veronica said, quieter now, but her voice trembling. "And you said 'it's better this way', and then you left. Elijah did not "cut you off" from me, it was you, _just you_. You made that very clear."

"I didn't-"

"That's _not your voice_!" Veronica was practically screaming. "Stop talking to me in _her_ voice!"

"I _can't_." It sounded like Christine was losing patience.

The Courier took a deep breath and stepped into the room. "Ronnie-"

Veronica gave her a quick look over her shoulder, and dismissed her just as fast. "I'm going to find Elijah," she said. "Find out what's _really_ going on here." She brushed past the Courier and was gone.

Christine wrapped her thin arms around herself and turned to face the wall.

The room was large and elaborate, with a bar in one corner and a chandelier hanging over the large dining table in the centre of the room. A bookshelf stood by another door, and paintings lined the walls. Christine pushed open the door, and the Courier followed her into the bedroom.

"This must have been Vera's room," said Christine quietly.

Vera – or what was left of her – was sitting in a chair by the window, still wearing the dress that her image wore in the fountain. It was like nothing the Courier had seen before – smooth and shiny and black, with red trim. It had a high split up one leg, and a large silk flower on the hip. It was garish and beautiful and tasteless. The Courier _loved _it. As she approached the chair, her bare foot crunched something. She pulled her foot back, dripping blood. She'd crushed an empty syringe. No, wait, an empty med-x syringe. They were scattered around Vera's body like petals fallen from a dead flower. She took a step back, heart racing. The words 'LET GO' were scrawled on the wallpaper above the bed.

"She must have been locked in here when the bombs went off," Christine said, watching her. "Hotel lockdown just trapped her in, same as me. I guess that's a better way to go than starvation." She paused. "I used to call her that too. Ronnie."

The Courier turned to face her. She leant back against the windowsill. "She told me you just… left one day. Called everything off and then moved away."

Christine sat down on the end of the bed, facing the door. She sighed. "My parents put a lot of pressure on us. Me. I didn't know until later that Elijah was… encouraging that. I guess she's right, though, I did break it off." She clasped her hands together and leaned her chin on them. "I didn't want to, though," she said, quieter.

"Is that why you're here? For Elijah? Because he made you leave her?"

Christine shook her head. "No. Well, not really. Maybe it started out that way. But… hell. I've been tracking him for more than a year now. The things he's done… I've only just caught up with him, but I've seen evidence of what he's done, left behind every- wait." She sat up straight. "Veronica said you were – or used to be – a courier. Is that right"

The Courier raised an eyebrow. "Yeah."

"I met another courier. It was just after Elijah had left the Big Empty. He helped me escape. He told me… that he was looking for another courier. And that you'd had a big impact on his life. Like Elijah had on mine."

The Courier stared. Her legs felt shaky under her, and she stumbled across to the bed and sat down next to Christine.

"What did he want?" she asked unsteadily.

"He didn't say. But he didn't seem… happy that he had to look for you."

A movement in the doorway caught her eye. Boone was standing there, listening. Watching.

The Courier swallowed thickly.

"You don't remember him?" Christine asked. "It seemed like… whatever you'd done… was something big. Something that he couldn't forget."

"No," she said, desperately. "I don't know!"

"He wears an old world flag on his back. And-" But the Courier wasn't listening. She had a glimpse of a memory, little more than a snapshot, of him standing, looking over his shoulder at her. "Come on," he said. "Let's-"

"At the Mojave Express," said Boone. "He told you about the courier who was meant to deliver the chip instead of you, but saw your name and let you take it instead."

"What did I do?" she whispered, staring out the window. "I don't remember what I did." She looked up at Boone. "I told you," she said. Her eyes were wide "I told you, that one time at the Dam. That I'm… not a good person. Not really."

"Whatever you've done," he said. "I won't let anything happen to you."

Her pip-boy crackled into life. "You need to get back to the ground floor. Access the music archives. Go now."

She stood up, mindlessly, following her pip-boy map to the elevator.

She stared at the ground. "Maybe you were right," she said.

"What about?" Boone's voice was tense.

"Can't get away from what you've done," she said, her voice brittle.

He was silent.

"I guess at least I know what's coming for me. Sort of."

She stepped into the dimly-lit elevator. He put his arms around her.

"You're shaking," he said softly.

She took a deep breath and let it back out. "I'm scared," she whispered.

The elevator doors closed.

* * *

The Courier's memory had been right about the ghost people downstairs. They weren't hiding any more now. It was as if the hotel had been their target all along. They attacked in packs, running headlong towards them. The Courier, still weaponless, had to practically cower in a corner while Boone carefully and methodically eliminated them.

The reception terminal had the music data on it, and within it, the passphrase to the vault. The Courier copied it over numbly.

Back upstairs, she told Christine, who duly recited it into the speaker.

"Begin again, but know when to let go."

There was a tiny metal sound that signaled the elevator to the vault was open.

"You have to kill Elijah," Christine said. "He's done so much evil…"

"What's Veronica going to do when she finds him?" asked the Courier.

Christine shrugged, hopelessly. "I don't know," she said. "Good luck."

The Courier got into the elevator. Boone and God followed.

"Maybe you can't ever really begin again," said the Courier as they began their descent.

* * *

Lol, I had to actually edit the second to last line because it sounded like a joke setup. Sigh forever. Also, I really like reviews. Please review.


	11. The Twilight Hours Away

Jesus Christ. I'm going to have to come up with a better chapter naming convention. I keep lagging behind.

* * *

The elevator descended with a shriek of metal, old and unwilling to come back to life. It was cramped – Boone wasn't a small guy, and the nightkin – fuck, what was she meant to call him? _Dog_ seemed offensive, calling him _God _felt weird, and it wasn't like she could just combine both their names to make a whole, new name. Gog? She couldn't stop a near-hysterical yelp of a laugh from escaping, and pressed her hands to her mouth, trying to stifle it. But God was in charge for now, and in the absence of anything better, God it would stay. Anyway, _God_ was forced to hunch over to even just fit inside the elevator. It descended unsteadily, in fits and starts, but eventually got to the maintenance level.

The cloud was somehow stronger in here than it was outside. It was thick and metallic and almost overpowering. It curled around the floor, roiling on the concrete beneath the walkways as if it were alive.

She frowned. It shouldn't be here, surely. They were well underground. Where did it come from? This place made no sense. The wasteland, at least, had a… flow. A rhythm that rose and ebbed with life. This place was… well. Dead.

"Do you enjoy killing?" asked the nightkin.

"No," she said, but there was a voice in her head that said _well that isn't entirely true, is it?_ Pride in a well-placed headshot, the way they drop to their knees afterwards. Rivers of blood that ran in streams downhill, cutting tracks through the dust at Fortification Hill, pooling in dips and footprints, flowing over her boots and staining the leather, proud stains that she never bothered removing. The adrenaline rush when something that you were hunting figured out where you were shooting from.

She swallowed. "Yeah," she said quietly. "Sometimes."

"I thought I knew what you were," he said. "But now I'm not sure."

"Yeah," she said again. "Me too."

The maintenance passages were made up of rickety metal steps and platforms and catwalks, interspersed with low-ceilinged concrete passages.

Boone handed her a pistol he'd found in a gun case behind a table. It was comforting to hold, even despite its limited stopping power.

"This feels like a tomb," he said. "Be careful."

The metal walkways were cold under her bare feet. They were twisted and broken, decayed by the cloud.

There was an alarm going off deeper into the vault. Speakers on the wall crackled, and they were forced to shrink back as their collars started to give out warning beeps.

Boone leant against the wall to steady himself, took aim, and sent charred and warped plastic flying. He frowned. "Low on ammo," he said. "Keep an eye out."

He held out a hand for the Courier to take as she came to a gap in the walkway, a straight drop down into the cloud. She thought twice about accepting it, but she was still shaky, and she couldn't see how far down the room actually went through the haze. She took his hand and made the jump. He held on for just a moment more than he had to, and gave her hand a squeeze before releasing it. She felt almost pathetically grateful for the reassurance.

This goddamn pink dress. It didn't restrict her legs the way her red pencil skirt would have, but she still felt stupid. Like a kid playing dress-up. Like some poor traveler who'd walked into Fiend territory wearing jeans and a t-shirt. The soles of her feet were a dark red-black from the cloud residue on the ground and centuries-old dirt from the walkways.

"Ronnie?" she said hopefully, into her pip-boy. "Are you there yet?" There was no reply.

She almost walked into Boone, who had stopped. He pointed. There were three holograms patrolling the walkways up ahead. God shifted behind her.

"I can take out the emitters," he said. "There's a certain… pattern to the way they're placed. Wait here."

The Courier sat down inelegantly against the metal railing. She tried to concentrate on where she was going, what she had to do next, but her mind was bombarding her with questions.

"What if I'm someone really bad?" she asked, voice hushed.

Boone shushed her. "It doesn't matter. Don't think about it now."

"What if, when the NCR finds out who I am, they send you to assassinate me?"

He sighed and crouched down alongside her. "Christ," he said, putting his rifle down. "Firstly, the NCR doesn't do that. I know you've been having trouble with them, but taking out a relatively peaceful city governor's not something they'd do. Second, if they did, they wouldn't send me. Third, you've met the President. Boyd, Hsu, Oliver even. If you were wanted in NCR territory for any reason, at least one of them should have recognized you."

She blinked at him. She wasn't quite as sure as him that the NCR wouldn't jump at the chance to get her out of the way, but didn't argue. "Yeah," she said, trying to convince herself as much as anything. "Yeah, that makes sense."

He smiled, wearily, and reached over to touch her cheek. "It'll be okay," he said, quietly. "You don't have to do this alone."

She couldn't help but smile. "You still got my back?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Always."

He stood up as God came back. "It's clear," he said. They followed the walkway up some stairs, through a tunnel, and then they were there.

The vault was a metal dome in the middle of a vast room. It shone like gold as she approached. The air smelled like ozone as electricity crackled like lightning between towers, sparking off the vault.

For some reason she'd been kind of expecting one of those people-vaults, dotted around the wastelands and more often than not full of mutated animals and computer records that made her feel deeply uneasy.

She approached the terminal next to the door with a strange hybrid sense of doom and eagerness. _Unlock door to vault_ was in the list of commands in the menu screen. Simple as that.

Finally, gloriously, the heavy vault door swung open. She was almost afraid to go inside. They entered, cautiously, and the Courier turned around just in time to see the heavy door close behind them.

"Fuck," she said, trying to open it. Locked. Of course. She looked around the room. There was a computer terminal at the front of the room, and a blank screen behind it, a handful of old paper money, some medical supplies, and…

"Oh, holy _fuck_." Piled almost casually on a table in a corner were stacks of gold bars, gleaming dully in the low light. She hefted one experimentally. It was cool and amazingly heavy in her hand. She struggled to hold it up.

The screen at the front of the room crackled into life. Elijah's image, still unmoving, was projected onto it.

"You're here," said Elijah. "Finally. The vault is mine." There was a noise in the background. "Veronica," he said. "I'm so glad you're here. This is your triumph as much as mine."

Veronica's voice was muffled, further away from the microphone. "I don't understand what's happening here," she said.

"Let me deal with these people first. Then I'll explain everything." His voice became clearer as he turned back to the microphone.

"What do you want this place for?" asked the Courier.

"I suppose there's no harm in telling you now," he said. "As you won't have the opportunity to do any of this for yourself. What would you do with an un-killable enemy? A hologram from just one emitter could take down a whole army single-handedly. And the Cloud, the Cloud would be perfect to act as a barrier to keep people away, or to quickly clear living things from a large area. And the vending machines. Did you know that they form matter out of the chips themselves? With the right codes, the right formulas, everything could be mass-produced. No more hunger, no more scavenging. I could reshape the Mojave in any way that I wanted," he said. "This tech would change everything."

She narrowed her eyes. Chances of getting out of this one didn't seem very high. "What if I like the Mojave the way it is?"

"I'm terribly sorry," said Elijah, a hint of cruel amusement in his voice. "You don't really get a say in what happens from here on out. You're staying down there. And when you finally succumb to hunger or thirst or boredom, then I'll come down to pick up the pieces."

"Ronnie?" she asked cautiously. "Are you down with this?"

There was no answer.

"Fuck." The Courier closed her eyes and swore under her breath. "Okay. Elijah. Are you sure I wouldn't be more use up there than down here? I got ARCHIMEDES working." She held her breath.

There was a pause before he spoke. "Interesting," he said. "Did you use it for its intended purpose?"

"No. Used it for power supply."

He made a noise of disgust. "Pathetic. No, you're staying there. Thanks again for your help."

"What are you going to do about the Mojave Brotherhood?" she asked, panicking, words coming out in a rush before he could cut the connection off.

"I'll make them see that they were wrong to doubt me," he said. "Hardin and McNamara and all the others. They're still bunked down in Hidden Valley, is that right? Maybe I'll flood the ventilation systems with the Cloud, see who makes it out and who doesn't."

There was a muffled noise in the background.

"You... can't do this." The Courier could hear Veronica's voice in the background, quiet and shaky and determined.

"Why not?" asked Elijah. "I've worked for this for so long. I can't let anyone stop me now. I thought you'd understand what we're dealing with here. This discovery will change the Brotherhood forever. All chapters. Everywhere. We'll have sole control of the wastelands!"

"It's not… worth it. What you're doing. It's wrong."

Elijah sighed. "I thought you'd understand, Veronica. But now I see that McNamara and the others have… changed you."

"It's not _me_ that's changed."

The sound of a gunshot rang out through the speakers.

"Ronnie!" screamed the Courier, gripping the desk in front of her, desperate to hold onto something.

She heard the whine of laser fire, followed by more gunfire.

"_Ronnie!_" she screamed again, and kept screaming, staring at the static photo of Elijah's face, still projected on the wall. But she couldn't do anything. Her heart hammered in her throat. Her worries about being stuck in the vault were temporarily forgotten. If she'd brought Veronica here, back to the people she loved most, and then gotten her killed by one of them, she didn't think she could take it.

The gunfire died away. She could hear muffled noises, dragging and thumping. She covered her mouth with both of her hands.

A heavy sigh came from the speaker.

"Hey," said Veronica dully. "It's over now, I guess. I'll… I'll come down. I've got some keys that… I think should be able to unlock the collars. I'll be a couple of minutes." There was a click as the connection was closed, and Elijah's face faded slowly from the screen.

The Courier turned, carefully. The vault door had swung open once more. "Okay," she said. "How the fuck are we going to get all this gold back to the 38?"

* * *

I'm thinking of updating "If I Didn't Care" intermittently with a handful of post-game one-shot non-spoilery extras that I've been thinking about after I finish this story. Good idea? Bad idea? I don't think I have enough for a new story. ?_?


	12. When You Come To

I'm from New Zealand and this week has been shitty.

..just saying.

* * *

There was no fucking way they were getting all the gold back to the Mojave. Thirty-seven bars, and they weighed about thirty pounds each. Just getting them back up the elevator to the suites had been tiring enough.

The Courier stared at the pile, lying in disarray in the doorway of Vera's front room disheartenedly. Why the hell did she want them so badly? It had been a long time since she'd actually needed money. That was one of the weirdest things she'd found about being "wealthy" – she hardly ever had to spend anything. She assigned money to projects and people and places, but never had to buy food or water or drinks – on the occasion she went for drinks at the Tops or dinner at the Ultra-Luxe the things she ordered would usually be comped. What a pathetically privileged life she had.

God – possibly Dog at this point – was clearing out the ghost people from the lobby. At least that way he'd have been fed. Fuck knows how she was going to find enough to eat on the way back to New Vegas.

Boone was… somewhere. On this floor. She was going half-crazy trying to _just stop thinking about him_. He needed quiet and space and to be alone to think properly, and she needed to talk her thoughts through, get feedback.

She'd been trying to avoid eavesdropping on Christine and Veronica, who were quietly talking in the bedroom.

"What? No! You can't stay here!" Veronica's voice suddenly rose above the low murmur.

"This place is too dangerous to fall into the hands of anyone else. Who knows how many madmen there are out there who want invincible soldiers or ways to kill a whole city?"

The Courier hesitated, reluctant to get involved.

"So you'd just stay here forever? Just living in the hotel, making casino chips, buying snack cakes?"

"Someone needs to protect people from this place. And this place from people."

"But why does it have to be _you_?" Veronica asked, quieter. "I just found you."

The Courier tapped on the open door gently. They turned to look at her, Veronica exasperated and close to tears, Christine tense and angry.

She leaned against the doorframe. "Ronnie's right" she said. "You can't stay here. There's just nothing here."

"There's too much here," said Christine. "That's the problem."

"What if I sent some securitrons here from the Mojave? They could keep people away."

"I think the cloud would get into their circuits. Rust up the moving parts, stop them from firing." Christine shook her head.

The Courier folded her arms. "This is a really bad place. You're really okay staying here alone literally forever until you die? Okay, what if we blew up the hotel? Doghadsome sort of gas thing going in the kitchens before, that could do it."

"It won't work," she said. "This place is built to last. I think there's lead between the floors. It's not coming down short of a direct hit with a ballistic missile."

"Maybe we could just fuck up the lower levels, then. Or – no, this is better: we seal the casino again, and then destroy the control room in the switching centre and the switches that Dog had to pull."

"We can't be certain that would stop people from getting in."

"No," she admitted. "It's not perfect. But I think it's good enough."

Christine frowned. "Alright," she said, eventually. "Yeah. Alright. I'll come back with you."

Veronica hugged her. "Thank you," she said. "We can contact the California chapter once we get back home."

There was something else, though.

"Ronnie," said the Courier. "I don't want you to take the emitter back to the Mojave."

Veronica looked up. "But… this is kind of what the Brotherhood _does_. Make sure old tech isn't in the wrong hands."

"I know, but… I think any hands might be the wrong hands. Even the Brotherhood." She shifted, uncomfortably. "I don't want to seem- holy shit, this is so awkward. Um, The Brotherhood is kind of a gigantic threat to… me. I mean, I don't want to use these holograms myself. I think they're too dangerous. Especially with no way of neutralizing them. But if one faction has them, the rest of them have to develop something. I don't want the Brotherhood to move against the NCR and I really don't want an all-out, three-way war in my Mojave."

Veronica narrowed her eyes. "Sorry, _your_ Mojave? I think I must have missed the ceremony when they signed the whole damn thing over to you. The Brotherhood _needs_ this. We're camped out in a hole in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to protect us. Without this, we're not going to survive."

"You said yourself that the Brotherhood needs to get away from their focus on military tech. You know, go outside, talk to people. The Brotherhood does _not_ need this."

"You have to trust me. Elders are cautious with new tech, it's in The Chain That Binds."

"I _do_ trust you. Just not really McNamara and definitely not Hardin. We know already he wants to take over as Elder, and I'm pretty sure he wants to take the fight back to the NCR. I mean, that's not just protecting technology, it's actively fighting the main civilizing force in the wastelands. It's just way too dangerous. Too much of a game-changer."

"She's right," said Christine. "Stopping people from getting this tech is the reason I wanted to stay here." She paused. "Let it go, Ronnie. It belongs in the past."

"I can't…" Veronica began, but trailed off. "Chrissy," she began again, almost pleading. "I don't want…" She stopped, again. Her shoulders slumped. "Okay." She took the emitter out of her pocket and put it on Vera's nightstand.

"I'm sorry," said the Courier. Veronica didn't respond. The Courier touched Veronica on the shoulder briefly and left.

She was exhausted. It had been almost a week without any real sleep, only a few hours snatched napping or passed out.

She found her way back to the room that she'd woken up in earlier, made sure to wipe the grime off her bare feet on the carpet, and climbed under the covers gratefully. The sheets were cool and the mattress was soft, and she drifted into sleep almost immediately.

She couldn't tell how much later it was when the mattress dipped. Someone had climbed into bed beside her. An arm went around her. She made a happy, sleepy noise in the back of her throat and wriggled backwards, snuggling against the warm body behind her.

"Hey," said Boone.

"Mm," she said, nodding, eyes still shut.

"Did you mean it?" he asked quietly.

"Mm?"

"What you said earlier."

"Shh," she mumbled. "Sleep."

There was silence.

* * *

She woke up alone and disoriented and couldn't figure out what to do first. She had to figure out _who_ was prepared to carry _how many_ gold bars. She needed an auto-doc. She wanted that goddamn _dress_.

The dress was closest – well, Vera did have that auto-doc in her room, but it looked like an older model, and the Courier wasn't quite sure how to use it. Plus it didn't have a chamber attached, and she wasn't particularly happy about lying down on the floor – however clean – to have her lung operated on.

When she got to Vera's room, Christine and Veronica had, fortunately, left – the task of breaking a skeleton's arms off to get their clothes off was fairly unpleasant at the best of times, and this one had a name and a tragic history attached. Still, she was nothing if not practical, although the dress definitely wasn't. The skeleton was old and dry and well-preserved, and her arms broke off with a crack like firewood. She was careful to not let the dress snag on any of the ribs, and finally held the dress in her hands before her.

She heard a familiar, quiet laugh from behind her, and turned to see Boone in the doorway.

"You be quiet," she said, grinning.

"We're about ready to leave," he said. "Why don't you come with me down to the clinic? The auto-doc might take a few hours. I'll get things organized while you're in there."

"Sure thing," she said. "I want to get my pistol from the theatre on our way past, though. Just to feel… not helpless."

He nodded.

They made their way to the clinic. It was much quieter outside, now that the Gala was over. The ghost people had sunk back into the sewers.

They were walking differently, she realised. When they were in the Mojave, she led the way, and when they'd first arrived Boone had been leading. Now, they walked side by side.

"This is more like it, right?" she joked. "Just the two of us… minimal bullet-sponge enemies… The worst thing about right now is that I have the fucking Gala opening music stuck in my head."

She almost wanted to hold his hand. Like it was an actual romantic walk. Ha. She tried to squish the impulse. Embarrassing. But this place very probably would have been beautiful, if not for the constant blanket of the cloud. The same crowded buildings that had been so intimidating when she first arrived might be pretty under a different sky.

"Seriously though," she continued. "When we get back, it's going to be drinks every day, by the pool, at the Tops. Or the Kings' new place! Though I don't know if they've had the chance to renovate the courtyard yet. "

"Were you…" he began. He didn't seem like he was going to keep going.

"What?" she asked.

He sighed, slowing down. "Earlier. You said something about… three kids and a white picket fence."

She frowned. "I – what?"

"Christ," he said. "It doesn't matter." He walked on.

"I think it does," she said. "Is this about… having children?"

His eyes were focused on the road ahead. "Yeah," he said, eventually.

"Is this really a good time to talk about it?" she asked.

"I really doubt it," he said tersely. "Just… never mind."

"No no no." She looked up at him. "It's important to you, isn't it?"

"It's something I think about sometimes."

She swallowed. Yeah. That made sense.

"Well, yeah," she said, trying to fake a confidence she didn't feel. "Like, maybe one day. New Vegas is no place to raise a kid."

"Can you think of anywhere better?" he asked. "There's food, clean water, security."

"Vegas is about excess. Any way you look at it. You ever seen a kid running around the Strip?"

"It... it doesn't matter. Nowhere is going to be perfect. Sometimes you just have to work with what you've got."

The Courier looked up at him. "I guess I'm not going to be in charge of New Vegas forever," she said. "After this is all over – then yeah. Maybe. I don't know. I've never thought about it before."

"I shouldn't have brought it up."

"No, it's okay," she said. "I think…" but she couldn't finish it. _I think you'd be a great dad._ But he- he almost had been, and there it was again, that old wrenching ache she used to get just at the thought of what had happened to him. What he'd had to do.

"We'll talk about it more when we get back, okay?" she said, as they came to the clinic.

He didn't answer.

He kissed her before she got into the auto-doc.

"See you when I'm done," she said with a half-smile.

"I'll be here," he replied.

The door closed.


	13. The End Of The Day

Anyway, here we are at the end. I've tried to focus on character during this story, but it still seems like there has been a lot of 'quest retelling', which I don't really like. I'm going to have to get more actually creative for the next part(s?).

Also, thank you for your review and concerns to JackDouglas33 who I couldn't reply to directly. :)

* * *

True to his word, Boone was waiting outside the auto-doc when the Courier regained consciousness. He handed her a lightweight suit of black armour.

"Found it in the other room," he said. "Thought you might like it a bit more than that dress for the walk home."

She grinned.

They met the others back by the fountain.

"Oh, yeah. You can keep that armour," Christine said when she saw her. "I don't think I'll need it any more."

They split up to rig the explosives; Dog and Boone to the control panel behind the gate, and Christine, Veronica, and the Courier to the switching station.

The vending machines had a code for demolition charges. Why? Well, why not, there were codes for everything else. The Courier was tempted to find a way to get these back to the Mojave – the possibility of finding a simple, limitless food source was almost unimaginable – but she wasn't sure how secure they were against hacking. And what she _did_ know was that the chips were easy to counterfeit. And with the wasteland's endless supply of entrepreneurial types wanting to make a quick cap, chances are any machine brought in would be hacked within a week and become someone's pet chems and explosives dispenser.

"The strangest thing about the hotel," said Christine, as they fixed the demolition charges to the control panel at the top of the elevator shaft in the switching station, "is the holograms. The hotel creates them out of the people there. Did you see the copies of Vera? Wandering through the empty rooms, trying to get out... It's awful. That's what she must have been doing before she... died."

"Fuck," said the Courier. "_That's_ what they were doing? I thought they were some creepy electronic prostitute kind of thing."

Christine stared. "How would that even work?" she asked. "You can't touch them."

"Well, you know. There's some holographic girl walking around your room, presumably not against your wishes, what are you meant to do with them? I'm assuming it's a paid service."

A reluctant smile quirked the corner of Christine's mouth. "I think you've been in Vegas too long."

"I think you'll find-" the Courier laid a block of C4 near one of the charges- "that I have been _away_ from Vegas for far too long." She turned back with a grin. "And I think we're done here."

"Wait," said Veronica. "I just thought of one more thing. The signal. Inviting people here."

"Yes," Christine looked up at the hotel. "That would be... maybe in the room Elijah was in."

"I'll go look for it then," said Veronica.

"I'll co-" began Christine, but Veronica interrupted.

"No, it's okay. I'll find it." She stood up quickly, and took the elevator up to the surface.

Christine stared at the closed doors after her.

The Courier looked at the ground. "She's... had a tough time," she said, awkwardly.

"Yeah," said Christine. "I'm not sure... how things are going to be. When we get back. When things are normal."

"I'm, uh, not that great at relationship advice, to be honest. But I think... I think she needs time. This whole thing has been pretty crazy for her."

Christine laughed, humourlessly. "Yeah. I understand." She shrugged. "Let's go outside and set these off. Then we should check to make sure it's worked."

Carefully perched on the tile rooftop, the Courier gently clicked the detonator button. The earth rumbled beneath them, and for a moment the Courier expected ghost people to come flooding out of the ground, but none came.

"You wait up here," said the Courier, noticing how uneasy Christine was about getting back into the elevator. "I'll check the damage."

The lower level control room was a mess. The console was destroyed and the machinery lay in ruins. Upstairs, where they hadn't placed as many charges due to the elevator's proximity, was less damaged, the computer terminal still active. The Courier resolved this by unplugging it and dropping the whole thing over the railing to the factory floor below. It shattered against the concrete. Good enough.

She crawled back up onto the roof with Christine. "Yeah, I think we're good," she said. "Back to the fountain?"

Boone and God were already waiting when they got there. The Courier tuned her pip-boy's radio signal to the Sierra Madre broadcast, looping endlessly in Christine's voice.

"Does that really sound like me?" she asked. "It's... weird."

"Sort of. It's strange, though. You do sound like her, but you... you don't really speak the same way. So it's different."

It abruptly turned off as she was speaking. Dead air. A few minutes later Veronica came back. She didn't speak to any of them.

Dog was the only one who knew for certain the way out of the cloud. Not even God knew, not really. He pushed open the wrought iron gates, and walked out, ahead of the others.

There was a small building just past the front gate. Inside were crates and bags and boxes and guns and armour and _stuff_ piled almost to the ceiling. This must be where the Sierra Madre security system took the things that it thought were dangerous or contaminated or prohibited. The possessions of every single person that had made it into the Sierra Madre. But none of the others had made it out again.

Being relatively recent visitors, they found their weapons and armour relatively easily. Boone handed her the holorifle. She hadn't had a chance to actually fire it yet, and while she wasn't _great_ with energy weapons, she was pretty interested in how it worked. There was a huge stack of chems piled in a corner which she stared at for more than a minute before wrenching herself away.

As they walked, the cloud thinned, and more sunlight filtered through the haze. The air faded from red to pink, and then finally it was clear. She could almost think that things were back to normal. The air was sweet, strange after the copper tang of the cloud.

They followed Dog as they began to walk back to the Mojave wasteland.

The one thing that she would always remember from that journey was her discovery that the holorifle would kill a deathclaw in two shots. Maximum.

* * *

The Courier's heart beat a little faster as they approached the NCR's Mojave outpost. The soldier at the gate gave her a nod as he opened the gate for her.

"You look like hell," he said. "Where you guys been?"

"Uh," said the Courier. "Not sure." She turned to look at the others.

"Near the Boneyard," said Christine. "As far as I can tell, anyway."

The soldier shrugged. "That's a long walk."

"Holy shit, yes," said the Courier. "Good to be home."

They restocked up on water at the outpost canteen. The Courier almost expected to see Cass sitting at the bar, back where she'd first seen her all those months ago.

Another soldier waved her past the massive ranger statue at the other end of the outpost, leading to the road to Nipton.

There was a haze over New Vegas, still a tiny speck in the distance.

"Something going on?" The Courier nodded towards the city.

"Could be," she said. "Haven't heard from Vegas for a couple of days. It's not like they still check in every day anymore, though."

She looked up at her, then back at the city. She narrowed her eyes. "What the fuck has that fucker done to my city?" she said, almost to herself.

She set off, walking faster.

As they got further up the I-15, they could see that the haze was smoke. New Vegas was burning.

"Mother_fucker_," she said. "Shit. Okay. Ronnie, you take Christine, go to Hidden Valley. Do- uh, big guy, you come with us for now because we're going the same way, but we'll have to split up a bit later."

She shook off Boone's hand on her arm. She couldn't stop, couldn't think of anything else except for her city.

It was the first time that the Courier had been up the I-15 since it had been cleared, and she still found herself a little jumpy, watching for any movements.

New Vegas was burning. _Her city_ was burning. Thick black smoke rose over the city walls.

They stopped outside McCarran base.

"Sorry, big guy, this is where you get off. Follow this road all the way north, then take the road into the mountains. Marcus should be around to meet you, although Keene might be better for you to talk to. I don't know."

Dog took a couple of steps away, then turned and looked back at them.

She smiled in a way that she hoped was reassuring. "It's okay. You'll be fine. No one will hurt you."

Boone and the Courier found Carrie Boyd inside the terminal building. She looked less than happy to see them.

"Come back to rescue everyone?" she asked. "The monorail's non-functional at present, so you can't get in that way. Sorry."

"What the fuck is even going on?" asked the Courier.

"I have no goddamn idea," she snapped. "We haven't been able to contact the embassy, and no one's gotten in or out in days."

"Why not?"

"Missile fire. Heavy. Persistent."

The Courier frowned. "Like the Boomers?"

"Yes," said Boyd. "_Like_ the Boomers. I thought they were too scared of the wasteland to leave Nellis though."

"Well... any idea who it is?" the Courier asked.

"Like I said, we've got nothing. No contact. None. I don't even know if one goddamn person is alive in there."

"Fuck." The Courier ran a hand through her hair, frustrated. "Okay. Fine. Let's just go see what the fuck is going on." She turned to look at Boone. "Let's take the east gate, try and get to the Mormon fort. Hopefully someone will be alive in there."

She didn't turn back to see Boyd's reaction.

* * *

Seriously, the holorifle is a FUCKING BEAST GODDAMN.

The next part of this story is _Viva New Vegas_. See you there!


End file.
